What if we thought having a belly, not flat abs, was sexy?

I’d be good to go :)

Willendorf Venus?

I would have to consider eating alot more, and give up exercise.

I’d be getting a lot more dates….

I would like to visit Azerbaijan, or a society that values more fat on women. My friends and I love having discussions about things like this because our views are so polar. Completely flat abs reminds me of a muscular man, so it doesn’t turn me on when a woman has it. I really do need to see some pudge lol. And my friends just can’t understand how I would like any woman over 140lbs. It’s insane, our disagreements are like atheists and christians, without all the anger.

I really don’t know why I like these women. I’m not complaining, but it’s strange how 20 more pounds makes someone so unattractive to one person, and irresistable to another. I disappointed a poor woman once, she was probably 110lbs and very attractive, and she was naked and ready to go, but I simply could not get it up. I got weirded out feeling her small body. I just don’t like it.

I was reading an article on CNN, about how the influx of immigrants has caused some people to desire more voluptuous features, as opposed to what has been (and I guess still is) accepted: a usually straight frame with large breasts. Although now, mainstream men want small women still, but with larger butt and fuller lips.

Great question @Simone_De_Beauvoir. It would be so wonderful if we could embrace our healthy (regardless of their size), beautiful bodies rather than focusing on whether they conform to today’s fashion. I have met men who have said they love women to have tummies and they weren’t my lovers so it was really just conversation in general. Perhaps we should all stand in front of a mirror every day and celebrate our rounded bellies. Give them a good loving, rub!

Azerbaijan won the Eurovision song contest this year didn’t they?

The US would be the healthiest country in the world? They’re called winter babes here.

I once heard it remarked that clothes are modeled on stick-thin women because they most resemble clothes-hangers.

I think ultimately it doesn’t matter that much.

I honestly believe people tend to be attracted to faces first, when evaluating someone. A face in the healthy range (maybe a little overweight) according to the scale looks better to most people. Those people have decent or thin bellies.

Flat abs, I believe, are just an added attraction, like power windows on a car that is already nice.

When you consider the stomach in isolation, maybe you want flat abs, as it implies the person is in amazing physical shape, so it is attractive. But we don’t consider a belly in isolation except in magazines or movies. I believe, in practice, it is a competitive vanity thing that has little to do with attracting the opposite sex.

Do any woman actually wear those clothes shown out on the runway? My guess is no, not very many.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought good point. The face is where its at, A slightly chubby woman with a nice face is way more more approachable than a woman who’s all cut, but has the face of a horse shudders

Seriously, self-tummy-hatred is pervasive. I don’t even want to love my stomach, that is how much I hate it. I really do love the replies to this, though.

@incendiary_dan hey, I remember saying that on a thread once!

If that were the case then we’d all be happier and less self conscious. And I would probably be a super model. Haha

@Bellatrix Yes!

With so many men, slim and thick sporting flabby stomach “pooches”, I thought that was the agenda already.

Whoa, WHOA…we don’t?!?!
Wouldn’t know it by all the muffin-tops ‘round these here parts.

Christ, I forgot for a while I even had feet.

I’ve always had a belly, even when the rest of me has been in hard body shape. Womens bellies ARE beautiful!

The ‘Rubenesque’ look has been favored in history and as @Simone says, some cultures see rounded female figures as a sign of health and prosperity.

I could have the most awesome, shapely, rock hard legs, toned arms and chest and still have that little round belly. I remember as a teenager that I was envious of the girls that had portruding hip bones that made those little tunnels over their hip bones when they were lying down in a bikini. lol

I have come to love my body, it’s served me well through all of it;s various female transformations.

I could stand to drop some weight right now, but, just yesterday I have to admit I was admiring my big boobs bending over in a low cut top.
It’s good, it’s ALL good! ;-)

In Hawaii, being on the larger side is actually considered a good thing. I guess it means the person is healthy and stuff.

Well tummies used to be considered more healthy and attractive, before industrial propaganda became the vogue, and before fattening food was so easily available, and non-manual work and transportation was rarer for the middle and lower classes (so if you were plump, it was a sign you might be wealthy). I have the feeling you know that, though.

I like the video, i never knew belly jiggling was so fun! It would certainly be an interesting world if people loved big belies. I bet more people would actually struggle to gain weight to get a belly just due to the psychological effects of negative self esteem and how them physically manifest in you day to day activities.

I would be on the next Bachelor!

Mine’s not flat and I’ve never had any complaints.

@nikipedia

Right! Me either.
Infact, I have had several lovers that have told me that they didn’t want me to drop 10 lbs. At the risk of sounding narcissistic, haha..I had a partner a few years ago that told me I had the ass of a 21 year old when I was 45. Guess the belly doesn’t really matter, especially if you’re an ass man. lol

If belly became sexier than flat stomach, we will be very surprised how many people will be more comfortable with themselves. I’ve seen my friends complain how they need to make their stomach more flatter, and their stomach looks perfectly fine. If media will tell everyone that having a belly is sexy, a lot of things will change.

My isn’t flat either, but I got a wonderful boyfriend who loves me the way I am. Sometimes flat stomach doesn’t really matter to some people.

If only I could love my own belly as much as I love my cat’s chubby tummy. I absolutely love his tummy and I kiss it all the time. My own stomach, not so much. : (

Now I want to ask the fluther community in a question, but don’t want to steal @Simone_De_Beauvoir topic, does anybody really find tight abs that sexually attractive, or do we just see them and wish we had them, and admire our lovers who do?

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought I don’t find abs that attractive on men. Sure you can look all you want but at the end it won’t stay like that unless men work their ass off trying to keep it. So I think it just fun for a while then we get bored with it.

I just want them for myself. I’m not really interested in how they look on other people, but it’s not a breaking point for me. Just not my preference. However, I’m aware that my desire to fit the mold is relatively unhealthy.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Like it said in the video, those superior abs take a lot of work. I’ve heard your diet is very restricted. That doesn’t sound like fun. I admire them because I understand it takes a lot of work, but I don’t find them attractive on a woman, and although I would like to have them, I’m not dedicating a large portion of my life to a physical asset.

I don’t think they’re attractive because I assume they’re always hard and muscular feeling. I would feel like I was making love to a hairless man lol.

@Schroedes13 and I’d be on The Bachelorette.. sad story for us

Being a rugby player, and being the “BIG boy” of my team, I’m not exactly the thinnest person. To be honest I am not small, at all. No one believes that I weigh as much I do, but I am still big. I have a tummy, I’ll admit it.
Plus, I’ve dated a vegetarian, and it made me feel like crap because she was twig thin and i was this big dude who had to be careful to not break her when I hugged her, among other things. Worst of all, I couldn’t eat meat. I was born in Alabama (unfortunately, I am stuck in Minnesota), and we eat us some meat!
Now, I am with a girl who is BEAUTIFUL, and she isn’t twig thin. I LOVE THAT! I can hug her and not break her, I can hang out with her out in public without feeling too big for her, and (best of all) we eat real meals together that consist of meat!
All in all, I am not a fan of skinny girls with no tummy. I like a tummy and I like being comfortable with the girl I am with.

I think the body obsession can be worse when we are younger. It’s all about acceptance of who and what we are. Not that we can’t make changes that benefit us, but being OCD about anything is not healthy. Being obsessed with fitness and exercise is not any better than being a couch potato. Same rope, different ends.

People can become compulsive about all sorts of stuff.

Personally I am really liking my age and letting go of the body image stuff.

I don’t WANT to work at it that hard anymore, and I don’t!

Which one is better? http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/19743/ my man Chris

Well, since I tend to gain weight in my tummy, it would be very helpful for me if that were the case.

I have said, not on fluther, but at other times, that all this influx of Latin Americans into the country make my body type less desirable. I remember noticing that the Mannequins in Miami clothing stores had a slightly sway back and more of a butt/hips, then those I had previously observed in stores. I have what I call a typical Eastern European ballerina body, flat butt, not very shapy body type in general, mostly because of my waist in my opinion. As I have gained weight I do have more chest and hips, but my stomach is large as well as I gain weight. I am what the medical community calls an apple as I pile on pounds.

I did have a boyfriend once say to me that the little bit of fat where our wombs are I guess would be the location, very lower part of our abdomen is sexy to him. He found it very feminine. But, still the women, and myself at the time, were very thin. I was a size 4–6 then.

I think a slightly rounded belly happens to be sexy on a woman. It looks nice when its soft. Not hard.
Now on a guy, its also ok, so long as it doesn’t look too soft like a womans.
Overall if it was the current idea of sexy, than I probably would’ve dated chubbier guys. And I may have had a hard time finding dates when I was younger. I was very petite when I was younger because I really loved sports. So I guess I would’ve been very dateless. As it was, most of the guys thought me as a guy pal because of my competitive nature in sports. The only reason I got guys to even look my way was because I was petite. I probably would’ve had to give up sports so I could be heavier and get boys to like me. That would’ve sucked.
Nah, knowing me back then, I probably would’ve refused to bend to the publics idea of beauty and continued playing. Of course I may have ended up dateless and my husband may never have looked my way, thinking I was too slim and not sexy. Then again he was really skinny so I probably wouldn’t have like him at all. He wasn’t into physical fitness, he just burned a lot of calories like crazy.
So basically it would just reverse the prejudice against overweight people and make underweight people less than desirable. We will just be back to the 1800’s when women dresses where designed with some fullness around the belly and men with some bellys were considered sexy because it meant they ate well and so they had money.

I like being thin, that is why I wouldn’t like it if I had a big belly. I like to run and swim and be active, the more weight I carry the slower I am and the more bounce to the ounce. I was never twig skinny but not much fat on me. Now as I age, I do have more padding than I did when I was 20, but hey, I am 66 whaddaya want????

I don’t mind a little extra weight on anyone, but when people are very overweight, I sometimes wonder how they can stand being like that. Not necessarily in a judgemental way, but since I can’t stand it on myself I wonder how others deal with it. But hey, I can’t stand wearing super tight leg pants, my legs feel like they are suffocating, so I wonder how others can stand wearing them. It’s just a difference in taste I guess.

“mostly because it showed wealth of the family” is, I think, the key statement. I think cultures have consistently lauded—be it Boticelli’s pale and curvy figures to today’s tan and toned tummys—figures which represent the leisure class.

It’s a form of cultural Darwinism to reinforce images of the class of (women, mostly, but men as well) who have means—and today that means that you have the time to go to the gym and the ability to have a ‘healthy glow’—fake or not.

Whether that’s beneficial or healthy is totally different, but I do think it’s consistent.

You need something to keep up the momentum, while making loooooove, a nice flat stomach just isn’t going to cut it.. Give me a woman with some meat on her bones. Someone I can bounce off of, personality wise :-/

It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
Rubens,
and again.
Titian.
Botticelli.
Pulp Fiction.

I thought I would mention that I find very muscular, very low percentage of body fat, on women very unnattractive. Women who body build a lot and have no fat covering those muscles, I can see it in their face, even when they have clothes on. Their faces look muscular. They become unfeminine to me, maybe we perceive a rise in testosterone that we are consciously unaware of? Besides the fact that it is not natural for a woman to be so muscular with so little fat. I would much rather see a woman 20 pounds over weight with lots of curves than a very muscular thin woman with no curves. Even if she augments her breasts it isn’t the same, because she has so little fat on her body the new breasts do not soften her as they should in my opinion. The thin muscular woman’s now created cleavage is usually very wide and looks very artificial.

My grandmother grew up with a mother who wanted to fatten her a little. They did very well financially at one point, and it definitely had something to do with social class that my great grandmother did not want her children skinny. My grandmother in her 40’s lost 20 pounds and kept them off the rest of her life. She always looked fantastic to me. I thought I would point out that heavy back then was probably our average in America today. I don’t know that for a fact, just guessing.

@rooeytoo That is sort of how I think too. How can they stand it? I feel so uncomfortable with myself right now, because I need to lose 10 pounds, could lose 15 to get to where I really prefer to be ideally. If everyone were blind including myself I would still feel this way, because it is more than just the visual, it is how I feel physically.

If having a belly was considered the sexiest then people with flat stomach would be the more self concious ones and you may very well be asking this question regarding the slimmer frame, ie: “what if we thought having a flat stomach, not a belly was sexy?”

I must mention that my boyfriend, though fit, has a little bit of a belly. Not much at all but it’s definitely not rock solid and I love it. I am not attracted to super hard abs on a man but I do find a flat stomach sexy on a girl.

Well, my belly is probably a little bigger this morning, I ate about a ½ lb. of Pistachios last night watching a movie. lol

It has roots in the infantilisation of women. More importantly than looking like a child, insinuating that the feminine psyche is infantile is an important media tool of “distraction”. That is why most of the attractive movie stars and singers talk so stupid. They won’t sell otherwise.

I was always under the impression that women like a little belly on men.
At least that is what I have been told by numerous ladies.

Just for fun…. this versus this. I would rather have the boobs. And the hips. And her hair.

@redfeather I prefer to look at Crystal Renn. I think she is more attractive than the first photo, but I would much rather look like the woman in the first photo.

@ANef_is_Enuf Wow! Really?

@Leanne1986 Good point.

@ANef_is_Enuf of course! Because that’s what they want you to think! My mom and I get Instyle magazine and we look through it sighing because we wish we were super thin. We could wear so many different things and look so good! Instead, we try to cover our tummies, and hips, and thighs. Prom dress shopping was a nightmare.

You guys gotta fight the system! @redfeather Take that magazine and throw it on the ground!. Lol.

@Blackberry I will! after I look at the shoes

@Blackberry yes, really.
@redfeather it just seems less stressful, like you said. I don’t want to have to find a way to camouflage the parts of my body that I dislike.

This is worth a read for all those whose mothers or SOs shaped the way they view their bodies. For me, @Blackberry, it wasn’t ‘the system’, it was my own mom and my choreographer that forever implanted in me the concept that I was fat even when I was nowhere close to any standard that would classify me as such.

@redfeather The second one is way more hotter.:)

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I had a similar experience with my coaches, but also my mom was anorexic starting when I was 12 until I was about 15. One of my coaches, when I was 14, 5’2 and 115 lbs (and exercising 4 hrs a day), did a fat caliper test on me and told me I was grossly obese- a heck of a message for my formative years. The article is right on- parents and role models probably have more of an impact when they support the media than the influence of the just the media.
So, even now, my mind works like a dual track- one track goes “be healthy, be happy, accept your unique beauty, you’re fine, etc,” then the other track “repulsive-repulsive-repulsive!” I think a lot of women have that dual track, too.

@linguaphile So true about the dual tracks, it’s so exhausting.

@linguaphile

That’s awful! Obese! Bah!

But ya know, the opposite can occur as well.

When I was still maintaining my peak shape a few years ago, a dash under 5’4 and weighing in between about 124–126, lots of muscle, very toned, looking great, just perfect for me, and I had a ‘friend’ who always had a hard time with her weight constantly trying to sabbotage me.

She would ply me with food, tell me I was looking anorexic which was rediculous!

Me? Food lover of the planet that can easily pack on the lbs. with little effort. She is no longer my ‘friend’ for a myriad of reasons, but, I remember feeling so pissed off when I was nowhere near being underweight and was in top health, walking/running 3 miles a day, working out, riding my horse on 10 mile trail rides 2X a week.

Feelin’ grrreat!

I remember stopping with her one day because she wanted to get takeout pizza for her family that night and she asked me what I wanted to eat while we were waiting.

I said ( on my way to the bathroom ) to order me a diet sprite, that I was not hungry and had already had lunch. I come back to the table to find a giant plate of cheese stuffed bread sticks sitting in front of me.

It was one of the first, of many, shows of her ultimately disrespectful sneaky and passive aggressive side.

DON’T WORRY! BE HAPPY!! EVERYBODY NOW!!! OOOOOOH OOH OHO OOOHHH !!!

As long as your happy in your own skin that’s all that matters.

@Schroedes13

Cheers! Hefting my 10,000 calorie Scotch Ale after a long day :-D

I think it would be wonderful, but what would be even better is if any type of body was widely considered beautiful. I’m not encouraging obesity nor am I encouraging anorexia, but I think a person with some excess weight is just as beautiful as a person of ‘average’ weight is just as beautiful as a person lacking weight. There’s nothing wrong with perfect abs or some fat.

With many cultures what is seen as Western beauty is not the gold standard. People look to those women in Africa with stretched necks because of those rings, or lips and ear lobes, which even the Western world has embraces, at least the youth, to many seem odd or even unattractive, but to those who lived there and grew up with that culture it was a sigh of beauty. In the spirit of the question and not going off any other direction, that is the best I can say about it.