My Big, Fat, Childfree Belly

The surprising--and continuing--journey toward childfree belly sovereignty.

I’ve always had a round belly. Well, that is not entirely true. When I was a young child, it looked as though I would inherit my mother’s petite, slender body type. I was a beanpole—completely non-bumpy. But once puberty arrived at age 12, so too did bumps and curves of many forms, including a small pooch.

From this point forward, my pooch became a frequent object of scorn and speculation, even when she was no bigger than a small pup. She worked a lot of people into a lather, transforming them into wanna-be health czars or self-esteem gurus who proselytized about how whittling down my pesky pooch would enhance my physical and emotional wellbeing. In high school, my beloved grandmother even suggested I start wearing a girdle. “I can take you to May Company and buy you the brand I use,” she offered with earnest.

I grew up in the era of Janet Jackson’s abs. This did not bode well for someone like me whose pooch hovered around the spherical end of the continuum at the peak of my 20s, when I played tons of tournament-level racquetball (hey, it was the 90s!) and worked out several times a week with a personal trainer. Eventually, I pushed aside any notion of transforming my pooch from soft to firm and instead directed my aspirations toward other examples of female strength celebrated by the media at the time, like Linda Hamilton’s biceps in the Terminator II movie and Madonna’s chiseled thighs.

Although I gracefully turned down my grandmother’s girdle offer that day in high school, I can’t deny that I spent the next couple of decades elevating the stock value of industries peddling “control top” accoutrements. I get short of breath just thinking about the many years I spent squirming into undergarments that were meant to flatten or “minimize” my pooch, even if it meant waistbands that violently dug into my skin, or fabric that was terribly itchy and unbreathable to the point it constricted my movement and simply eradicated any notion of feeling joyful in my body.

Despite all the “tummy-trimming” tricks of the trade, I was often asked if I was pregnant, which I found horribly intrusive. It was also incredibly shaming. That the answer was “no” took away any justification for me to have a protruding belly.

Now, at the verge of menopause, my pooch has continued to stubbornly insist on taking up a little more horizontal terrain than is socially sanctioned. The proselytizing continues, but the questions on whether I am pregnant have thankfully ceased. This offers little relief.

Just like all of us, I swim daily through a swarm of billboards that loudly renounce perimenopausal belly fat as something to be feared and disdained, triggering manic conversations about diet plans, creams, supplements, shots, chia seed water, exercise “regimes,” surgery, vagus nerve meditations, and affirmations that promise to cut, vacuum, or melt off whatever excess middle-aged women have shamefully allowed themselves to gather at their midsection.

Worse, it seems that most of my fellow sisters I encounter these days—at the gym, waiting in line at the brunch spot, chatting in between work meetings, even painting across from me at a community table during a watercolor class—become talking sandwich boards that publicly promote the crusade to eradicate their “middle-age spread,” lamenting its existence, sputtering in desperation over its petulance and the resulting necessity to commit to a lifelong “battle of the bulge.”

Sucks for me, because now that I am on the verge of menopause, no matter how much I spin my butt off, lift weights, or avoid carbs, my pooch, it seems, is here to stay.

This essay is meant to be a proclamation of Childfree Belly Sovereignty, which celebrates all forms of pooches: large and small; flat and round; soft and firm; fat and thin. I do not intend to imply that women should not prioritize their health, especially in middle age and beyond. I am all for honoring each woman’s path toward wellbeing, whatever that may mean to them.

I am not here to hand out prescriptions. Instead, I wish to intentionally side-step these all-too-familiar narratives in this essay to liberate and center the sacred voices who reside deep within all female and AFAB bellies, and who have too long been corseted, constricted, minimized, flattened, colonized, or shamed out of their right to be heard, seen, and revered.

This call to host such an alternative conversation on pooches has landed in my lap rather unexpectedly. I won’t lie: It has proven challenging. My imposter syndrome is flaring up like a four-alarm fire. Why in the world would a childfree woman like me be considered to host such a conversation?

(Mainly) choosing to not have kids, I never considered my belly as something important to think about. My own internalized shame about her roundness combined with the decision to forego pregnancy made it easy to render her nonexistent. A lost cause. A heap of blubbery rubble to toss aside from my consciousness.

This makes me sad.

I am sad about being terrified of my pooch, panicked that if I don’t make her disappear ASAP, I could drop dead at any second. I am sad for rendering her a mere death sentence. I am sad for a lifetime of feeling embarrassed by her, of binding her with my shame, sad for all the millions of times I have tugged at my shirts to hide her from view to the point where all those shirts end up having microtears in their midsection. I am sad that I have apologized—to myself and others—for her taking up “too much” space. I am sad that I have not spent enough time telling her how much I love her. I am sad about my lengthy crusade of trying to eradicate her existence.

I take this grief as a sign of an awakening.

Grief therapist Francis Weller said that when we awaken to our grief, we refuse to be small. We reclaim our right to be big. To take up space. To be seen. Well, perhaps my big, fat, childfree pooch deserves a long overdue reframe. In her persistence to not be small and to take up more space than is socially sanctioned, has she all along been beckoning me toward a revolution?

Here Poochie, Poochie, Poochie!

I didn’t even realize how marginalized my belly was until…unexpectedly, remarkably, perfectly, she “popped up” during the inaugural event for this Substack community a few weeks ago. I’ve talked about the slippery fish of the unconscious before: wouldn’t you know it, one of those buggers flopped literally right into my lap during my guest host Ayana Amoa’s January Sensory Awareness event.

As we sat there eye-to-fisheye during a quiet moment of personal reflection offered by Ayana to all of us in attendance, it suddenly occurred to me that I have lived my entire life within a culture that asserts the only way a woman is “allowed” to have a big pooch is if she is pregnant.

The only “legitimate” reason for a woman to have a protruding belly is if she is going to have a baby.

Any other reasons for having a big pooch are illegitimate and forbidden.

Suddenly, in real time, I realize the word I keep interchanging with belly as I write:

Pooch.

I do not believe this is an accident. I believe that slippery fish uttered this word into the little air bubble that emitted with a soft “pop” from her mouth as she settled into my lap.

Why pooch? I mean, there are plenty of other terms to choose from. Potbelly, bubble belly, paunch (sounds like the name for the color of puke), spare tire, breadbasket (so yeasty), pudge, beer gut (also yeasty), apron belly (so “trad grandma”), FUPA (i.e., fat upper pubic area; ew!), muffin top (always hated this one), pouch (nope, not carrying an ornery kangaroo in there), bay window (WTF?), love handles (GTF-off-of-me), tummy fat. These are quite polite compared to what I glanced at in the dark corners of the internet.

In contrast to these silly, derogatory terms, we know the common ways a pregnant belly is referred to: Baby bump. Blossom. Bun in the oven (ugh, still yeasty). In a family way. Carrying. Expecting.

I am not a mother, so I wouldn’t know for sure, but I bet a pregnant woman has never been accused of having a beer gut. Just a guess.

This has me thinking about something, and this something feels like it has the potential to be so potent that it could maybe even travel backward in time to destroy some of the internalized bedrock that formed long ago around the legacy of shame and hatred toward nonpregnant bellies. I think of Superman in the first original movie, when he discovers his beloved Lois Lane crushed to death in an earthquake after failing to save her in time, his rage and grief so huge that it shoots him off into the cosmos and gives him the superhuman momentum to reverse the Earth’s rotation in order to turn back time, rescue his lost love, and commit himself to protecting her for all eternity.

What if I could do this for my belly: my big, fat, childfree belly? What if we could all throw a lightning bolt into that hard foundation of belly shame, fortified by thousands of years of female oppression and patriarchal pronatalism, an icing of white supremacy as hard as marble glazing the top; reach through the rubble to obtain the golden orb of female belly sovereignty; and then swoop back into the present with that orb lighting the way so we can scoop up our childfree and childless pooches from the clutches of patriarchal perpetrators and hold her tightly, tenderly, lovingly, never ever letting her out of our embrace again?

Perhaps choosing to use the word pooch is an intuition, already flirting with a personal revolution through simple word play. For a reason I trust has to do with ancestral wisdom eons beyond my own, I have apparently decided to claim this word to reclaim my nonpregnant, childfree pooch from the crushing crevasse of racist, misogynoir/misogynist, heteronormative systems.

Pooch.

Something not shaming. Something not oppresive. For goodness sake, something not YEASTY. Something not given to me by another for another’s use, like “pouch” or “love handles.” This is MY Pooch.

I like the sound of it! I like how it conjures the adorable image of a golden lab with big brown eyes and the kind of face that makes you just want to moosh and squoosh and nuzzle with her and then spoon and take a long nap together. My pooch. My big, fat, adorable, cozy, cuddly, beautiful, childfree pooch.

Hello there. It’s been a long, long while. Let’s cuddle.

Photo by Jayant Chaudhary on Unsplash

Sensory Awareness and The Macy’s Lady

All it took was a simple prompt:

Place your hand on your belly, under your shirt, flesh-to-flesh.

Then, an invitation:

Let your hand move around your belly, noticing the curves and contours and softness. Spend some time here, just you and your belly. Welcome whatever comes.

I was not expecting so much to come up for me from this prompt, offered with gentle and sturdy wisdom from my guest host, Ayana Amoa, during her Sensory Awareness event for Making Meaning Without Kids.

Do I have to? This was my first thought before a sense of responsibility came over me. Well, this is the inaugural event of my Substack community, so I guess I should be a good sport.

My palm was already sweaty as I slipped my hand under the stretchy waist band of my yoga pants and rested it on my belly. My skin was cold, like the cheek of an old woman accustomed all of her life to turning into the icy wind to reject a kiss. So neglected….so numb. I wanted to yank my hand away, but coaxed by Ayana’s trusting voice, I lingered.

Awkwardly, I moved my hand around my belly. Too big. Too soft. Too roomy. Too much. Swells of grief rose within me, quickly subdued by a shiver of silliness.

This is nuts! I said to myself as my hand found itself cupping my lower belly. Who cradles their belly like this?

The Macy’s lady, that’s who.

A few days after the Sensory Awareness event, I was surfing through Macy’s website looking for a top. My eye rested on a particular item I considered purchasing, until in shock and horror, I realized it was a maternity shirt. [Why does it feel like a cardinal sin to mistaken maternity clothing for “normal clothing?] The thing that tipped me off was the image itself: a tiny blonde woman with delicate arms, donning this black tunic-like shirt. Sounds innocuous, right? Well, it was her gesture that exposed the maternal purpose of the shirt: while one of her arms dangled at her side, the other curved toward her belly, which she cupped gently with one hand, as if she was holding a fragile baby bird.

This gesture we all recognize, not only from websites and catalogs advertising their maternity clothing lines, but also from interactions with the general public. It is not uncommon to see at family gatherings, the café, on an airplane, at the park, or other public spaces of leisure a woman lovingly caressing her rotund belly. Without even needing to ask, we know the deal: She is pregnant.

Because why else would a woman lovingly caress her rotund belly in public—or even in private?

What would it be like if a nonpregnant, childfree woman gently caressed her belly in public? Or cupped her hand to cradle the bottom of her pendulous pooch? Or simply rested her hand on her protruding stomach while lovingly staring down at it?

The answer is obvious.

It would look ridiculous!

Can we even imagine in our Western world a woman sitting with a friend at a café lovingly caressing her nonpregnant, childfree belly while her friend coos sweet things to it?

“Oooh, look at your doughy self! It makes me just want to pinch you!”

“Awww! Look at how it wobbles like a souffle. Soooo adorable!”

“I just love seeing how attached you are to your pooch. It really inspires me.”

“[Sigh…] How I wish I could have a big ole belly of my own to love.”

Back to reality, here is how I bet a scene like this would unfold:

Woman is sitting with female friend at a café. She reclines in her chair, fully exposing her rotund belly. She gently caresses it.

A stranger notices and approaches.

“How far along are you?” they ask.

“Oh!” the woman exclaims as her friend giggles. “I’m not pregnant.”

“Uh…,” stranger sputters, a bewildered look on their face. “I apologize. It’s just that I saw you sitting there rubbing your belly—and you seemed to be glowing, so I guess I just assumed…”

“It’s OK,” the woman says, eager to get back to her private conversation with her friend.

With a slight nod of comprehension, stranger reaches into their bag. “I have some Gas-X if you need some?”

---

A few days ago, something caught my eye as I walked to dinner. Taped to the window of a salon was a flyer with two black and white photos of the same woman, who was donning a black sports bra and yoga shorts. She was headless and legless: only her torso was centered in the frame of these two images placed side by side. A closer look revealed that these photos were meant to depict before-and-after snapshots of liposuction surgery.

In the photo on the left, the headless woman’s pooch was barely noticeable, accented only by the slight shadow cast by the photo itself, which made her tummy look like a dimpled smile. The “poochy” parts of her belly looked like apple cheeks. Instinctively, I felt the corners of my mouth curl upward as I smiled back at her grinning, adorable pooch.

My eye then traveled to the photo on the right. Those apple cheeks were gone; her belly was no longer smiling. It seemed to fall silent. I felt my own gut lurch with a spasm of nausea, which then gave way to a gastric storm of burning rage. A well of sorrow pooled in my throat.

Why are women’s bellies so hated? What makes our bellies so feared? And how the hell did we end up buying into all this crap for so long?

Who’s Afraid of My Big, Fat Pooch?

When Ayana and I were planning the Sensory Awareness event, I was not sure about her idea to briefly focus on the belly in a gathering of childless-not-by-choice and childfree women. Something felt…dangerous about this. What if someone is triggered irreversibly in some terrible way? Or is carried away by uncontrollable grief? Or melts in shame right in front of our eyes? Or revolts over calling attention to an area of the body so heavily associated with motherhood?

Now I am wondering: why did childless and childfree bellies feel so dangerous to talk about and pay attention to?

It turns out that all of those things I was afraid of arising indeed surfaced for not only me but for the other participants too. During our share after the exercise, grief, shame, and unexpected comfort were some of the experiences that others spoke to. Associations with our fat-phobic culture and admonitions of women being “too much” in a society that hates women were also enlivened within the group.

But no one melted. No one was carried away by a rogue river. No one raged against our nerve to discuss childfree and childless bellies. Instead, our shares served as kindling to the fire Ayana lit for us. We bellied up to that fire and sat together for a short but potent time, keeping warm.

CC 4.0 by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen

Childless or childfree, pregnant or nonpregnant, our bellies have an ancient history of serving as an alembic—a sacred vessel.

Of course, they have not always been treated this way. Present day included.

Both pregnant and nonpregnant women’s bellies—or bellies that ever held a uterus—are the most colonized, sanctioned, and oppressed parts of the body in the history of human bodies since patriarchy. This is not ancient news. It is recent history, alive and well up to the present day. Whether drawing from the origins of slavery in the U.S.—which colonized Black female bellies with the aim of exploiting their reproductive faculties, a lineage that snakes into the present with the continuation of reproductive injustice focused primarily on Black women—or facing the sobering reality of living in a country that holds legal authority over all bellies with uteruses and ovaries, or swimming through the flood of messaging on social media, all forms of advertising, and even conversations over Sunday dinner that vilify big bellies on women (and no doubt contribute to the prevalence of eating disorders), it is not hard to understand why women have such a troubled relationship with their bellies.

But I do believe, as a childfree person who has never been pregnant, that bellies, specifically those belonging to nonpregnant women, continue to be one of the most hated, most feared, most shamed areas of the body in the history of the human body since patriarchy.

Why?

Childfree bellies, uncentering pregnancy as their only recognized and valued function, remind all women that there is more purpose to reclaim within and among ourselves.

Childfree bellies, unencumbered by the demands of hosting pregnancy and giving birth, become essential tools to the resistance.

Childless-not-by choice bellies who alchemize their grief over nonparenthood become essential tools to the resistance.

Our bodies are literally and figuratively built to tolerate the heat of holy rage and sacred grief bubbling away in the cauldron of our bellies. Withstanding eons of misogyny, misogynoir, white supremacy, and patriarchy, our bellies alchemize ancestral lineages of oppression into reclamation.

Because our bellies persist despite not ever bearing children, they get to focus on keeping our cauldrons simmering. And when we come to a steady boil, our nonpregnant bellies threaten the system.

The work of racial justice and body activist Sonya Renee Taylor comes to mind here. In her book The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, she said, “When we decide that people’s bodies are wrong because we don’t understand them, we are trying to avoid the discomfort of divesting from an entire body-shame system.”

There is a lot to gain from the system’s attempts to oppress female-identified bodies, especially the nonpregnant ones. Fatphobia, with its roots in white supremacy, is so far an effective way of grooming women to dis-member ourselves (sometimes literally). To sequester ourselves through body shame. To police each other so that we stay separate, frozen numb by the loss of warmth that comes from gathering at the community hearth, where all our voices are welcome.

Because when we start talking out loud to each other about all of this, we begin to re-member ourselves.

Once we begin to re-member together, we gain the momentum to divest from hateful systems, which include patriarchal pronatalism.

Once we gain the momentum, we build tolerance around the discomfort of taking apart those systems and reconstructing them according to the blueprints of liberation.

What would it be like to re-member ourselves and divest from this entire system of hate that is at the root of all the atrocious injustices we are weathering today?

Can you imagine the revolution that would begin if we all re-membered?

Perhaps you are already dreaming it.

I am…. And one thing is for sure: My big, fat, childfree belly will be the first to arrive at this revolution—and so will yours—in all of her ungirdled power. Like a beacon, she will guide the rest of me into the center of our collective cauldron, where hopefully I will meet all of you who followed your own guts. Then we can let our pooches run wild together.

Photo by Bharathi Kannan on Unsplash