While at the gym one day, I overheard a woman tell her trainer, "The problem is that all my weight goes here," pointing to her belly.
I feel it's important to note that, of course, this conversation caught my attention, and as I glanced over, I saw a woman with what appeared to be a flat abdomen.
That aside, I immediately began wondering, somewhat facetiously, where she - or any of us, really - might prefer our weight land. Our earlobes? Our heels? How challenging would that make shoe shopping?
Humans' weight naturally fluctuates and women, in particular, will tend to store weight, when they do gain, between their stomachs and thighs. There's good (reproductive) reason for that. Is it possible to re-frame this "problem" as biology at play?
Some bodies will store weight in other places, and that's okay, too. There's a cultural narrative that suggests that there's a right way and a wrong way to have a body, when really, all of our bodies are unique. Prioritizing one body type - or way of gaining weight - over another does us all an injustice.
Meghan Trainer sings in "All About the Bass": 'Cause I got that boom boom that all the boys chase | And all the right junk in all the right places." The right places imply the wrong places, and the right bodies imply the wrong ones. We need to work on this. Because when it comes to body liberation, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "No one is free until we are all free."
