SANJANA RISHI
Content Creator and Attorney
“My relationship with my body, specifically my stomach, is constantly evolving. Like many women, I grew up disliking the way I looked in the mirror, and I have struggled with self-acceptance, even as an adult. Even at my absolute thinnest, I wanted a ‘flatter’, ‘thinner’, ‘more defined’ abdomen—I was obsessed with getting there, and anything less was just not acceptable.
Over the past few years though, I have come to understand that working on your body and accepting it are far from being mutually exclusive—in fact, to ever truly enjoy work, you have to love what you are working on. Part of this realisation came from sharing my body, and my views on it, with the online community—I was and still am surprised by how many women out there saw my body, at various stages, as an ideal or a goal. Every time I received a compliment, I felt a bit of shame…people who didn’t even know me could love my body, and yet, I could not. I began to consciously train myself to appreciate and respect my body at every stage of my journey. And a consistent, daily goal for me became, ‘love your body today’.
Pregnancy has, of course, really helped me in that regard. How can I not love this belly, no matter how it looks, when I know that it grew a whole human from just a few cells? I think even before I was pregnant, I was learning to embrace my stomach for exactly what it was. This included and still includes covering it up on days when I felt like. For the record, I think it is okay to cover up if you are feeling insecure. Projecting body (or any other kind of) positivity without acknowledging the work that goes into it, including the bad days, is toxic. Not everyone wakes up every day loving everything about themselves. That’s just another unrealistic ideal to feel pressured to live up to, and we already have enough of those.
I think society’s idea of a perfect stomach is so specific that only a few women can ever truly achieve it: flat, toned, but still shaped like an hourglass…and smooth, hairless, and even-toned. Abs should show, they shouldn’t be too defined, otherwise you could look ‘manly’. Of course, women face greater pressure to look a certain way. There is pressure on men, too, but I feel they are not policed as harshly for not living up to that ideal. Women are consistently held to stricter standards and placed under stricter control. We have to deal not only with the pressure of looking skinny, but also the added stress
