Editor’s note: This question comes from the inbox of Cate Osborn, frequent Playboy contributor and Playboy Club creator.
Q: I feel ridiculous writing this as a full-grown 43-year old adult woman, but I have an apron belly, and I hate it. I’ve always been a larger-bodied person, but recently, due to perimenopause and weight gain during the pandemic, it’s now fairly prominent. My husband insists that he doesn’t care, but the only porn I ever seen him look at features skinny women with tight, toned bodies. I feel undesirable–not because of the porn, I understand that it’s a fantasy and an idealized version of sex blah blah blah, but I can’t even stand to let him touch my belly because I feel disgusting. It doesn’t affect my life or my relationship, but I just wonder if you have any advice?
Cate Osborn: I realize there is a deep irony in answering this question via Playboy, which, I think we can all admit, has not exactly been a bastion of body diversity over the years. In 2016, Fluvia Lacerda became the publication’s first plus-size cover model for Playboy Brazil. In 2017, Molly Constable was featured in the US version, which also featured Lizzo in 2019, and in 2021, Haley Hasselhoff became the first plus-size cover model for Playboy Europe, and that is the sum total of ‘fat’ representation in Playboy. Every time a larger body appeared, there were headlines and news stories about these daring trailblazers, and every time, the comments went about as well as you can imagine.
I am not going to condescend to you and say that you just have to magically “learn to love yourself”, because while loving and accepting yourself is deeply important, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We are taught from a young age to scrutinize, to critique, that we need anti-aging skincare and to be beach-body ready– but even for as much momentum as the body positivity movement has garnered in the past decade, Bridgerton still made waves when it *gasp* showed a plus-size woman in a steamy, romantic relationship. In 2024. This year.
While it may seem counterintuitive to body positivity, I firmly believe that you don’t have to like your belly. The same way that someone might wish they had curly hair or blue eyes or smaller feet, your belly is simply one part of the whole whole of you, and it’s okay if you wish your body was different. I am capable of loving myself and caring for my body even though it is a fucking TRAGEDY I do not have luxurious long curly 3A hair instead of the absolutely frustrating 2A/2B mixed nonsense that sits atop my head.
However. I am going to say this part to you gently but bluntly– What you must strive to do is stop fucking punishing yourself for it. Disgust, shame, embarrassment– those are a waste of time, energy and, frankly, the enemy of joy.
(Surprise! I chose this question for a reason!)
Getting comfortable with touch can take time, and the reality is may be that you might never be 100% comfortable with it– (lots of people in the world don’t want their feet touched and that’s okay, too), but the same way that sometimes you have to see a podiatrist, sometimes you might need your tummy rubbed, and you may even discover that you enjoy it. Due to a rancid combination of body dysmorphia and neurodivergence, there are many types and places I don’t enjoy touch, and that is *okay*, but after a lot of therapy and learning to like myself as a person, I realized that my aversion to having my own belly touched wasn’t sensory, it was, like you, based in a feeling of disgust and self-hatred. I felt shame when my partner would touch my stomach, because I thought of it as a part of me that was “wrong”, or “bad” because of my own internalized fatphobia. I was embarrassed for my partners to see me out of bras because of my heavy breast tissue, because I’d never seen breasts like mine portrayed as sexy. On the contrary, the only bodies I’d ever seen that remotely looked like mine were featured as grotesque, comedic, pathetic, or pitiable.
I have weighed, at my heaviest, 228 pounds in a women’s size 20. At my lowest, I weighed 108 pounds, a 2003 Abercrombie and Fitch Size 0, an accomplishment I remember because it became my obsessive goal and rationale for starving myself to death. In every iteration of my body, I have always had a stomach and breasts that pull down.
I had to practice, consciously, both receiving touch and reacting to touch, which are, by the way, two different things. Receiving meant working to unpack and break down the messaging that I’d internalized, that “beautiful people don’t have bellies”, “my rolls are disgusting”, that I “couldn’t ever be sexy until it went away”, and reacting to touch meant really sitting and evaluating and unpacking my thoughts. “He must be so grossed out” –okay, Cate, but why? “Well, because my stomach has a fold”- what’s wrong with that? – “Well, it’s ugly” – why is it ugly? – “Because it’s not pretty” – why? and ultimately, once I worked through each version of the lies I kept telling myself, it came down to “because nobody ever once ever told me it was okay to look like this when I was a kid, and as much as they’d look me in the eyes and tell me I was beautiful and I should love myself and be proud of myself, the same adults who told me that constantly dieted and insulted their bodies and did Weight Watchers and Jazzercise. Grown ups told me I was made in the image of God (perfect!) but grown ups also wrote the headlines about Britney Spears and filmed the morning show spots about Jessica Simpson. If they didn’t believe that they were beautiful, why should I trust them to tell me that I am?
Once I got to a place where I was regularly getting to the root cause, (internalized fatphobia), I was able to move on to practicing simply being touched, quite literally one second at a time. I remember very specifically tearfully confessing to my partner that I was deeply uncomfortable because he might think it was unattractive. His immediate response was “Are you kidding? I love that part, it’s so soft”. From there, for days, I’d ask my partner to give my belly a poke with a single finger. Over time, a poke became a long tap, became a touch, became a lingering trace, became a caress became him coming up behind me while I brush my teeth in the morning, grabbing my hated, dreadful stomach, and going WUBWUBWUBWUB. Baby steps. I have learned that I do not need or require the external approval of my partner, but affirmations do go a long way for me in terms of ending spirals of self-negativity.
I talked early about this also being the enemy of joy- once I started doing this, I started noticing all of the places where I was not experiencing joy- instead of enjoying intimacy with my partner and being fully in the moment, I would withdraw and be in my head about “oh God what if he accidentally feels my body” or “Oh no, I must look awful from this angle”. Part of taking ownership of your pleasure is taking ownership of the moment and giving yourself permission to simply feel deeply.
Getting past the embarrassment, fear and disgust may take time, and I honestly encourage you to consider speaking to a therapist. You may want to look up Body Dysmorphic Disorder, as it is incredibly common for the belly, skin, breasts and hair to be a major point of focus. There are lots of great BDD workbooks and exercises that have helped many of the people who’ve spoken about this issue.
I’m still by no means 100% always okay or comfortable with being touched in the places I was taught to hate, but my partners and I have built trust and consideration and communicated deeply about all of this, and so I encourage you to hold your own boundaries, too. You are allowed to take steps forward and back, you are allowed to change your mind, you are allowed to take the time you need to feel safe and valid in your own skin, whatever that ultimately ends up looking like for you.
As you embark on this journey, remember that it’s not just your brain you’re fighting, it’s not just your feelings about your body, it is decades and decades of fatphobia ingrained into every part of society and media. You are not a bad person for struggling with a feature that is never, ever shown in mainstream media as sexy or desirable. Give yourself grace. Give yourself compassion. Meet yourself where you are and realize that you didn’t learn this in a day, it will take time and patience and vulnerability, but I promise that at the end of this hard work, there is kindness in it for you.
Enjoy more of The Playboy Advisor archives here.