So, if you do a search for “Mommy Pouch”, seven of the top ten results are “how to lose that mommy pouch”. The other three are news stories about how horrible it is. Basically, the first page of google is all “This is bad, get rid of it.”

And a lot of time, clients don’t want to show off their stomach because they don’t have abs of steel.

But women are not supposed to have a flat stomach; not only do they have the same internal organs as all humans, they have an entire secondary set of organs that guys don’t have, which changes the shape of their abdomen. And after childbirth? Even moreso.

Marci Evans writes about this (or rather, shares a post where someone else writes about this) over at her blog. She shows this image of Serena Williams, before and after photoshop, then goes on to say:

By smoothing out (and airbrushing in) her stomach area, you are essentially removing that which makes her female, and you are perpetuating a myth that there is such a thing as a concave lower belly that occurs naturally, and not through extreme starvation.

I have a love-hate relationship with photoshop. I love what I can do with it, but at the same time, I hate the expectation that I must do this. That in order to present a woman as beautiful, I must give her a digital tummy tuck, remove the lines from her face, take the grey from her hair. That people must conform to some unrealistic standard of beauty.

If you haven’t noticed, my goal is to celebrate people as they are. You’ve made it through 2020. That’s amazing, and deserves to be celebrated. Not by pretending you are someone you aren’t, but by embracing the you that you are, by accentuating the best and most special things about you.

Evans goes on to quote her friend:

When I pay attention, I learn something new from it every day. I notice how my uterus ascends upwards after I ovulate in preparation for a baby (that will definitely not be coming anytime soon, but still!). I notice that this makes my stomach stick out for the two weeks prior to my period.

Now, I understand that some women have a higher body fat percentage than they might want. And Diastis Recti can be a problem, especially with women who’ve had a baby. My point is that photoshop has created a false sense of what is normal. That, if you aren’t built like an olympic athlete, you are somehow the lesser for it. That if you don’t have six pack abs a month after having a baby, something is wrong with your body. This is a lie. This is not the way it should be. You just created a human being in your belly. That’s amazing. Heck, the very fact that you have that ability is amazing and should be celebrated.

I know, I know, media has created this false sense of what is attractive. But more and more, people aren’t falling for it. The people who love you? Love you for being you, not for your abs. Society tries to force us into these boxes; don’t willingly climb in. Tear down the walls and torch that mother to the ground, then celebrate with a Beyond Boudoir Shoot.