Kate Winslet is right: we need to stop worrying about belly rolls

Yo I still remember the shape of Mischa Barton's stomach. In the role of Marissa Cooper in The oc, In the 2000s teen drama set in sunny, sandy California, the actress often wore a bikini. I watched that show obsessively as a teenager, and was consumed by Barton's body. I discovered that in order to be beautiful, I needed my stomach to look exactly like hers: washboard flat and framed by two razor-sharp hip bones.

Hers was a belly I'd seen elsewhere before, like Paris Hilton and Gwen Stefani. And the bodies of all the Victoria's Secret models who I've been told over and over again were ultimate bastions of feminine beauty. Of course, in our apparent age of body positivity, it's become “acceptable” to have some curves on our figures. But this doesn't really apply to the belly, a part of us that society still insists must be completely smooth. Have you also seen those videos of celebrities getting lymphatic drainage massages on their bellies?

The abdomen is often the part of the body we pay the most attention to, yes in men (see: abs), but especially in women, and especially at this time of year when many of us are out and about in bathing suits. We judge other people's abdomens (soft or hard) and we judge them in ourselves (flat or roll), often to a very unpleasant and self-flagellating degree.

Thank goodness, then, for Kate Winslet, who reminded us how absurd it all is in a recent interview with Harper's BazaarTalking about his new film, LeewardIn the film, in which the 48-year-old actress plays model-turned-World War II photographer Lee Miller, she recalled how during filming, a crew member suggested she change her position to change her appearance. “There’s a part where Lee is sitting on a bench in a bikini… And one of the crew came up to her between takes and said, ‘You might want to sit up straighter. ’ So you can’t see my little belly rolls? No way! It was deliberate, you know?” She added that she doesn’t mind showing her body – and her skin, wrinkles and all – in its natural state on screen. “Quite the opposite. I take pride in it because it’s my life on my face, and that matters. I wouldn’t dream of covering it up.”

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This is not the first time Winslet has defended her belly rolls. Speaking to The New York Times in 2021 about a sex scene he filmed for Easttown MareShe recalled how director Craig Zobel assured her he would cut “a bulging little bit of belly” out of the sequence, to which she replied, “Don’t you dare!” It’s an important message, one we seem to have forgotten in our current Ozempic era, where size zero bodies have quietly become the desired aesthetic once again.

But why do we place so much importance on the stomach? For me, it has always been the lens through which I view the rest of my body. I know that if I wake up with a flat stomach, it will set a precedent for how I will feel about myself for the rest of the day. In short, I will be confident. Not just in my appearance, but in everything else, from how things are going in my career to my personal relationships. It will give me a glow that other people will comment on and notice.

However, if I wake up feeling bloated, then it becomes the most intrusive thought I’ll have all day, one that will slowly infect how I feel about myself in every area of ​​my life. I’ll refuse to wear certain items of clothing (anything remotely tight is out) and be self-conscious about how I stand and sit all day. I’ll also avoid any cameras pointed at me. God forbid anyone tries to touch my stomach, too. There have been times when I’m lying on my side and partners have tried to touch it and I’ve quickly pushed them away, disgusted by the way my own body naturally droops and recoiling at the prospect of anyone approaching it.

This message is so deeply ingrained that I can only think it comes from my childhood in the 1990s and 2000s. It was in the shows and movies I watched and in the pages of magazines I admired. Even as a teenager, I remember standing in front of the mirror with my friends, all pinching our bare stomachs together, wishing parts of our flesh would disappear. In retrospect, it was not unlike that famous scene in White girlsWhen Lisa, played by Jennifer Carpenter, has a fit of rage in a fitting room, she pulls at her (completely flat) belly and hysterically calls it “Tina the Talking Belly.” I should add that all of this is happening despite the fact that I have always been thin and, therefore, for all intents and purposes, have met society's beauty standards.

Winslet’s comments were encouraging, to be sure, but they also made me feel terribly sad, because they reminded me how loud the noise around women’s bodies remains. That’s true regardless of whether you’re a prepubescent teenager or an Academy Award-winning actress. What kind of person feels compelled to tell Winslet that she should hide parts of her body? How dare anyone try to oppress a woman’s bodily autonomy in that way? If that comment had been directed at a younger, more inexperienced, insecure actress, it might be exactly the kind of thing that would spark a decade-long battle with body dysmorphia.

It makes me angry. For Winslet, for my younger self, and for the other women I know for whom this way of thinking has become more destructive, leading them to a life of disordered eating habits. Thankfully, for whatever reason, I have escaped that particular path. But that doesn’t make any of this much better.

We've internalised a dark message that tells us not to sit a certain way, or pose at a certain angle, that tells us to tuck in if we feel our stomach is sticking out too much, or to avoid certain clothes to hide it. It's tedious and exhausting, and I'm sick of it. Hard or soft, our stomach is a part of us, and as Winslet said, we should be proud of it.