First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Alex Siklos
I have lost my waist. It has been slowly disappearing through menopause, the pull of gravity on a 62-year-old body and the fact I am no longer a workout junkie.
It has been replaced by a soft Buddha belly that rests overtop the shelf made by my low-waisted pants. It becomes a jelly roll when I bend over. It is uncomfortable. It gets in the way. My feelings about it are mixed.
I do like the softness and roundness of it. I find myself touching it, cupping my hands over it. That feels comforting. However, it is uncomfortable when I try and do up my pants. It gets cut off by the waistband reminding me I don’t have the figure to wear low-waisted jeans any more. Maybe I need to get a bigger pair or buy some “mom” jeans. They are back in style.
I also don’t like my sideways profile in the mirror where I am convinced my belly and my butt are the same size. Oh yes, the butt has been disappearing, too, flattening over time as it slides down the back of my thighs.
I reflect on the baroque paintings by Rubens with voluptuous women, with curves and rolls, large thighs and round bellies. They are beautiful. They come to life by the artist’s brush and are clearly inspired by the beauty of the female form.
I compare them to many images of woman today. Social media shows filtered women with flawless skin, flat stomachs and perfect perky bums, curated images of what they want the world to see. They are not a reflection of authenticity but are coated with an impenetrable veil that does not allow you to really see them. They are women living in a world of created reality behind the wall of the laptop or smartphone screen.
Of course, the painter is curating and creating as well, so does that make it more real? I guess the question is what is reality? How can you tell? Does it really matter as we float around in our human forms, our meat suit, with a divine being inside?
Rubens’s 17th-century paintings are a depiction of the female form of the time, and the feeling of the painter. It feels real. It feels warm and flowing. The filtered online image is contrived to make it fit into what society says is beautiful. It doesn’t feel real. It feels cold and stagnant.
It comes down to how it makes you feel. It is not about what is real.
Rubens’s paintings makes me feel beautiful, uplifted and confident.
Social media images invoke feelings of self-loathing and failure.
So, I now regard my round belly from a different lens.
My time on the planet has built this belly. It comes from eating too many potato chips, drinking too much wine and not getting enough exercise. It also holds the scar of a hysterectomy many years ago. The scar cuts my belly vertically, dividing it into two parts. As I stand in front of the mirror, my belly looks like pull-apart bread rolls, like the ones my stepmother used to bake, stuffed into a pan. I smile thinking of my stepmom, her love of cooking and our wonderful Sunday dinners that always included those rolls.
I consider the scar again. It reminds me of that surgery that saved my life. The surgery that started the cascade of events that lead to the adoption of our two boys.
There is beauty in the belly and the story it tells.
It holds its own reality.
My relationship with it is still conflicted but I choose to love it and be kind to myself.
I will simply buy more comfortable pants.
Kathy Moffatt lives in Merrickville, Ont.