Learning to Love ‘The Flap’
A love letter to ‘the pooch’, and everything it taught me
Dear Flap
We’ve been together for some time now, and I feel I can speak freely to you. As a young adult I always liked the feel of softness on my lower abdomen. Despite the pressure to have it Britney-flat, pre-pubescent-flat; I was happy with things the way they were. A bit of softness. A bit.
When I was pregnant with my first child, my torso quickly became a mountainous landscape; as my belly burgeoned, I marveled at my skin not showing any stretch marks.
But they were there — you wore them like red and purple tiger stripes. I couldn’t see my toes, so I certainly couldn’t see you nestled so snugly under there.
After my baby was born, and he slept soundly in his clear hospital bassinet felt, I looked at what had become of my stomach. My once-firm, are-you-sure-you’re-not-having-twins-sized-baby-bulge, had turned into a wobbly mess. It looks like a popped balloon, I said to my husband. Ashamed, I covered you.
I know people call you ‘the pooch’, but to me you’ve been The Flap, for that’s what you are. A flap of loose skin, thrice made full with the feet, then heads of my children. And while the skin over my upper abs has proved itself to be continuously elastic and resilient, you’ve absorbed the full trauma of my life and body-altering pregnancies.
Of course, you aren’t going anywhere. You’re part of me. We’re together now. I carry you everywhere I go…I tuck you into skirts, jeans, and supportive activewear tights which squish you into submission for an hour or two.
How I’ve hated you, Flap. I think of how I regressed to my body-hating teen years, pulling you back tight in front of the mirror: This is how I’d look if I could have surgery; this is how I should look. The names I’ve called you — gross, plompy, disgusting. If you could have left, I think you would have then. I wouldn’t blame you. I was pretty mean.
Of course, you aren’t going anywhere. You’re part of me. We’re together now. I carry you everywhere I go, take you to the shops, the beach, concerts; I tuck you into skirts, jeans, and supportive activewear tights which squish you into submission for an hour or two. I can tell when I’ve lost a little girth around the middle, because you, dear Flap, actually become even more flappy. You are a living mass skin, flesh, blood, and imperfections: you are me.
I had a hernia repaired earlier this year. Someone told me I could have had them slice you off while I was under, that you can get most of it covered by Medicare. I don’t know if that’s true, but I didn’t even pursue it.
I felt protective of you, dearest Flap. How dare they speak of you that way — how dare they speak of me that way?
Flap, that’s when I realised. I’ve come to love you for what you are — more than a flap of skin, you’re a piece of me. I’ve come to celebrate you for what you are. You’re evidence of the amazing feat of creation my body has hosted; a coming of age physical trait which defies the patriarchal and weirdly child-like fetish of what’s desirable, what’s ‘feminine’. Girlish, green, and assenting, are all things I am not. I am an adult woman. I’ve known, been known, and I stand strong.
Fat is a feminist issue, and so are you, oh flappy one. Motherhood is deified — as long as women erase all physical evidence of it after — go back to aspiring to being lithe, little: less.
I don’t want to have bits of me cut off to achieve a body aesthetic. I don’t want to change the story my body tells: I’m a woman, a mother of three, I have strong, tree-trunk legs, and beneath you, oh flappiest of flaps, I have strong pelvic floor and core muscles. That’s the story my body tells.
Fat is a feminist issue, and so are you, oh flappy one. Motherhood is deified — as long as women erase all physical evidence of it after — go back to aspiring to being lithe, little: less. There are women who don’t get flaps, ‘the pooch’, or whatever. But contrary to what we hear, no woman ‘bounces back’ from childbirth. Our bodies are forever changed, and that’s just the beginning.
And flap? - dear, dear flap. When my children snuggle into your wobbly softness at story time, marveling aloud at how soft and wonderful mummy’s body is; when they move their little hands over my stretch marks, now silver and pale while I read their favourite stories, it makes it hard to not love you the way they do.
To hate you is to hate myself; and I don’t — I won’t. Not anymore. That’s the gift you’ve given me. And that’s why I love you, Flap.
.
.
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