Women put themselves into boxes without even realising it

I have recently read something about the Irish language - they don’t say I am sad - instead they say I have sadness on me, as if sadness is a clock that can be taken off vs the state we are in. The power of language truly at its best, and every time I experience it I become primed to notice even more of it. What I noticed this time around was how we women, and only women because men don’t do this - we put ourselves in boxes without even realising it.

I am talking about body shapes.

Saying I am apple shaped is all it takes for people to understand instantly that I am a woman who carries most of her fat on her stomach. These 2 words together are a shortcut to a whole conversation we could have about the shape of my body.

What I didn’t realize until today is, by using this shortcut we are putting ourselves in a box. We are defining our whole body by one part of it. And we really shouldn’t do that because, while all apple shapes do carry most of the weight in the stomach, the other parts of our body can vary widely. The width of shoulders, hips, waist, the length of torso, arms, legs- it all varies from person to person, and using only 2 words does translate that.

What I am saying is - it is not fair to put this body in a box. It is not fair to label ourselves, because the only thing we are telling people is that we have big stomachs - we are highlighting the part of us we don’t like and society judges us for. We're not mentioning the “good” parts, the parts that are socially acceptable, our favorite parts of ourselves, what we inherited from our grandmother. We are not showing any love for our body with those two words not just to others but to ourselves too.

It is the same for other shapes, isn’t it?

It's hard to fit body shape into boxes, but our desire for people to understand what we mean with the least amount of words possible, to label everything has done exactly that. So, what should we do now? Can we stop using these terms?

To be fair, as someone who’s blog is called Belly.Lines I can’t say that I will 100% stop using this label, because, how else will you find me? How will you know I am talking to you? While apple shaped is a label that puts us in a box I at least hope that when I use it you will find yourself in a box with others like you - a community where we feel less alone.So, until we all start believing that our belly lines are also curves of our body I will keep speaking to you so you can find me.

For more like this check out my previous posts and bellylines.com