No, if my body looked like hers, I wouldn’t consider it ‘ruined’ either! Goddamned 'tiger stripes’?! What a load of goddamned bollocks. Are they still inspiring when they’re not one or two faint lines on the washboard abs of an otherwise perfect size 6? PAH. …But that’s okay, I’m a goddamn tiger. I EARNED these stripes *eyeroll*
Sigh… I just think passing these photos around the net, to supposedly make women feel better about themselves and their stretchmarks, is counter-productive. All most women are going to see is a body that looks 10x better than theirs probably ever will! How about passing around a photo of a tummy that was truly, totally TRANSFORMED, irreversibly, by pregnancy - so women who have got a lot of stretched skin and loose muscles can see that they’re not alone, and many women actually look like that?
I love the 'the shape of a mother’ project for this reason. And I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve gone browsing there to find photos of women who have it worse than I do, to make myself feel better. I think seeing people who look worse, will make women feel better than seeing those like the one above with some cheesy remark about 'tiger stripes’ that we’re supposed to all be proud of. And also, I’d like to just say that it’s okay not to view stretchmarks as tiger stripes, but to think they’re butt-ugly. Body positivity is important, and mine is a body positive blog, but at the same time, it’s your body, you don’t have to be a hero about it. It’s okay to look in the mirror and go, “Well, that sucks.”
…I guess I should add, just so that I’m not misunderstood, I am not trying to dismiss any type of female body or shape… I’m not down with the tendency of women to label skinny, fit or perfect-skinned women as 'not real’ (You know, “men like REAL woman, only dogs go for bones…” *facepalm*). We’re our own worst enemy sometimes! Every woman’s body is real and valid and the feelings they have about it are valid. If a woman had a few stretchmarks like this and was otherwise perfect, but she was devastated about the marks pregnancy left, her feelings are valid. Though it’s a shame she can’t see how lucky and beautiful she is! If a woman has as many stretchmarks as I do and considers them her 'tiger stripes’, that’s fine, too. But I’m not buying the original pic flying around about our stretchies, and I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s an overwhelmingly helpful image. So I’ve added mine underneath, so that women with more than a couple of stretchmarks, and with a tummy that has been somewhat loosened by pregnancy, can know that they are not alone, and what these 'tiger stripes’ actually look like for a lot of us following childbirth.
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