Things about my body that will never be hot
(Or "trending.")
I published this post despite the fact that it’s public and anyone might see it (family members; my professional nemesis; oh Christ, my coworkers) and learn things about me they’d rather not know. Oh well! Bodily honesty and the pursuit of less obsession about perfection are the values that guide Body Type, the newsletter you should be reading if you want to feel better in and about your own body.
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I turn 37 years old in two days, it would not surprise me in the least if the world ended tomorrow, and I find myself emotionally moved when I see crow’s feet or allegedly imperfect teeth in the face of a woman. So while I’ve long been done with obsessing over my so-called flaws, now feels an especially good time to catalogue them. It’s an effort to lead the crawl toward accepting their existence in us all. Let’s throw on the lights and see how there aren’t really any monsters lurking in the basement. It’s just the same everyday stuff down there that’s always been.
If I’m fed up with fretting over ostensible imperfections and am desperately seeking something real in this spurious modern world, maybe others are, too. Kendrick was on the beat back in 2017. Maybe now that we’ve descended further into AI-altered, SkinnyTok-driven, copy-paste-face hell, more of us are ready to heed the call.
On her podcast Good Hang, Amy Poehler has said that an interpersonal dynamic in which you can gently make fun of friends or family is another love language. A little good-natured ribbing demonstrates a kind of trust, a bond forged through ball-busting. In that spirit, these are the things about my body that I can tease and play around about.
They are the things I know are not hot, that I know will not trend in the way Brazilian Butt Lifts do until Brazilian Butt Lift removals do, or huge breast implants do until ballerina boobs1 do, or extreme thinness does until curviness does until extreme thinness does again.
These are the things that are real. In a twist of fate or cultural influence or temperament I lacked when I was a self-hating 20-year-old, they are the things I can kindly roast a bit because despite it all, I trust in (and even have love for) the authentic and imperfect magnificence of my body.
I have a big cellulite dent on my ass
Imagine a hole punched into some frat house drywall by an emotionally immature adolescent male. That’s what I have on one of my butt cheeks.
Cellulite — which is fat pushing up against thick bands of fascia; nothing except having less fat could diminish it, and even then it might remain because God is dead — has given me a big concave spot on one side of my wagon. In a world preoccupied with aesthetic symmetry, this is what we might call a flaw of design. The contractor ran off with the down payment, the interior designer was hammered on the job.
It annoys me, and then I think of if a friend came to me in tears about a honkin’ cave-in on her ass: Sorry girl, but that’s so funny. I’d chuckle at her ridiculousness about this thing probably no one else notices (but I’d tenderly pat her hand in a “There, there, insane lady” way if she really needed it), so on my own body, I get over it.
My tits have melted into the couch
In this great post, Laura Wright wrote:
Temperamentally, my breasts have gotten, shall we say, substantially less patriotic. By which I mean: in my 20s, they had a Protestant work ethic about them — they were willing to get up each day and try their best. […] These days they are more — how do you say? French. They are experiencing ennui. They have lain down against my ribcage, they are relaxing, they are smoking a cig, and they will NOT be getting out of bed without massive structural supports.
Quite. My boobs are pretty saggy — that’s Big Naturals showbiz, baby — especially because when I lost weight years ago, they became somewhat … deflated. Flattened. Like Sarah, after she started smoking weed:
“A 30-year-old woman must choose between her bottom and her face,” Catherine Deneuve famously said. I don’t know about all that, but it’s been my experience that a woman in pursuit of less body fat usually must choose between leanness and a heaving bosom. When the returns of her efforts come with their shovels and buckets for the fat cells, they know there’s gold in them thar hills.
I went to a bra fitting once where the sales associate blundered her way through explaining that because I had “Um, well, limited volume” at the apex of my bust I would need certain NASA-engineered undergarments. “It’s OK,” I might have said. “I know that they’re like Christmas inflatables in repose on the afternoon lawn. I know that when I bend over, they’re like a couple of socks full of quarters.”
It’s fine, I invest in good bras. My slackened jugs are my little secret ;)
I have a sad belly button
More casualties in the torso department: When I had more fat on my belly the skin expanded to accommodate it; now that there’s less, the loose skin around my navel is hanging around like a tedious guest as you yawn and start clattering plates into the dishwasher. Oh, and psst … let me open my trench coat to show you all my midsection merchandise: Stretch marks? Kid, I got as many as you need. Two for one.
When I was young and had a taut little abdomen for maybe a year before puberty and binge eating blasted their way in like the Kool-Aid man, my belly button was like this girl’s mouth:
But now, it’s giving sad clown. It’s giving Pagliacci. It’s giving the quavering grimace of woe that breaks into sobs as soon as someone asks you if you’re OK. Ah, well. My belly button matches the national mood.
I tend to have a larger puss
Khloe Kardashian talked about this once.
“I tend to have a larger puss,” Khloe said on The Kardashians in 2024. “Like when I’m fat, it gets fatter. Because when I was fat, I had Camille [what she called it]. Now that I’m skinnier, Camille disappeared.”
Well, yes. The mons pubis is a mound of fat on the pubic bone area, and take it from a woman whose tiny classmate once pointed at her crotch at a pool party and said she had a “big vagina”2: Some of our mons are really out here pubis-ing!
Khloe also asked, “Doesn’t everyone want a smaller puss?”
I dunno, probably not so much until you and your asinine family ushered the concept of a micro-mons into our collective consciousness, you jackass.
Another flash to an imagined weeping friend, rending her garments because her vag meat is just too prodigious and alas, she’ll never find love — girlies, be serious. Upgrade your bikini bottoms and know with great pleasure that your saddle makes for a more comfortable ride.
Waist not, want not
There was a time in my life when I was exercising like crazy (it was the summer of 2020, I really had nothing else to do) and I got very lean. I’d already experienced a full-scale body recomposition3 but this was next-level: I had around 20 percent body fat and ab definition. You know what you learn even after losing a third of your body weight and getting more yoked than you might ever be again? You can’t beat genetics.
I was smaller and more defined all over, but I was still a formidable rectangle with barely any difference between my waist and hip measurements. This is just how I’m built. My mom’s this way, too. There’s no use trying to carve an hourglass from a refrigerator, beloveds. Throw away your waist trainers.
When I was an impressionable tween I saw a post online criticizing Hilary Duff for having a “square body.” I chucked that odious tidbit onto the teetering pile of things I was meant to hate about my own body for the next 10 years.
Hilary has since spoken of having a “horrifying” eating disorder that rendered her 98 pounds at 17 years old. But years later, she’d go on to become Hilary Buff:
I have to wonder if Hilary learned, as I did, that realizing your genetic potential re: muscle growth, strength, and performance makes it a hell of a lot easier to ignore whatever some dorks you could probably out-deadlift have to say about your supposed shortcomings.
I doubt there will come a time that “thick everywhere, with no hip-to-waist ratio to speak of” will reign as the feminine body standard. But finally, blessedly, at ever-closer to mid-life, I can gaze upon my blocky torso, droopy boobs, forlorn navel, dented ass, and pudgy puss and think, Eh. C’est la vie. When I need to know something legit as the cultural landscape around me warps and shifts into bewildering, hyper-perfect unreality, at least I know myself.
Want to neutralize your own “flaws”? Tell me about them in a comment.
Just kill me already
Little bitch
Lost a lot of body fat, gained a lot of muscle
I’m 60 and can still give a running list of the things about my body that have given me grief over the years. Long and strong legs, indeed, but their shape is roughly that of upside down tree trunks. Cellulite, check. Large and increasingly gravity-driven boobs. Wide hips and saddlebag thighs. Uneven shoulders (thanks scoliosis). And sadly, now I can add crepey skin on my arms and legs to the list. Yikes. But I can hike 20 miles in a day, bicycle, swim, and even run a little bit. I am healthy and content in my life, and have been focusing more on being kind to myself and my body this year. 🥰
I loved the honesty of this! I too have a rectangle body that will never be an hourglass no matter what I do, and I've just learned to accept it! Although I'm still mad at the guy that told me my body type was "plank" from Ed, Ed, and Eddy!