I bet on any given day I see an average of 25-30 belly buttons. Belly buttons of all shapes and sizes: innies, outies, in-betweenies, some with pretty little rhinestones hanging down, some peeking out over the tops of waistbands like the rising sun. It’s nice, really, looking at all these bare tummies. Having spent so much of last year in a state of isolated self-reflection, navel-gazing, it’s heaven to be looking at other navels for a change.
Like a sudden temperature drop before a summer downpour, all these naked midriffs signal another kind of storm — (I’m licking my finger and lifting it in the air like I’m Indiana Jones or something) — the crop top is back. Which means somewhere, about 300 miles south of me now, my mom is weeping. If you ask her, crop tops have always been and always will be inadvisable. If you ask me, the bra-shirt is the eternal pinnacle of confidence — a signal associated with a sort of Buddhist nirvana of self-actualization.
When I was younger, the amount of aplomb associated with letting your belly show felt like a completely unreachable apex. I never had the belly that would be most becoming for a micro shirt — it was always some sort of puffy or squishy or curved. For a long time, I was blissfully unaware that this kind of texture was not what I should want, but when I learned about the universal ideal of what a belly must be, having become desperate for even one of my pre-pubescent male peers to find me hot, I decided to stop eating the leftover pasta out of the strainer in the sink. And then to stop eating pasta at all. And then I got an eating disorder and decided to really kind of swear off carbs as a concept.
I lost a lot of weight in college and finally unearthed the waist I thought I was genetically doomed never to see. I dosed myself with maca and bee pollen and switched from cocoa to cacao. “Look, wellness! I’m doing it!” I thought. But If you peel back the overpriced charcoal mask that is “wellness,” or at least the version I learned from Instagram.com, what you’re left with is funny-tasting powders and anorexia. I lived that charcoal mask state for about four years, existing as a high-functioning anorexic who just thought she was doing what God and Gwyneth Paltrow intended.
But then things started to get worse. With my pre-disposition for worry and a default mood of “woe is me,” the pandemic led my wellness kick to deteriorate past the point of denial. I ran so much and ate so little that I started to feel so fatigued, not even maca powder* could save me. At first, I thought I was just getting tired because I wasn’t getting enough sleep. And I thought I wasn’t getting enough sleep because I had anxiety. But then it turned out that I had anxiety because my brain was starving. And I had fatigue because my body was shutting down.
It made my heartrate drop to a beat you would feel awkward dancing to, and I had to stay in the hospital for a week before I was well enough to walk up the stairs without fear of collapse. I’ve been embarrassed to admit that an eating disorder is what led me to such a low, I think because what I was doing seems so baseless now. It’s an inherently irrational illness, one that drove me to starve myself even when my parents were still paying for my groceries. But I’m learning more and more how widespread it is, how violently that screwed-up vision of wellness has metastasized.
I’m in recovery, and I’m trying to divorce myself from my misinformed perception of health — the one that deluded me into believing that I was lactose intolerant and “didn’t have a sweet tooth.” Health has a new meaning now, one that is totally antithetical from what every fitspo-influencer I’ve ever loved has told me — my hospital-prescribed meal plan is riddled with the stuff I had once thought to be evil, the very thing I believed would make me unlovable: carbs.
You wouldn’t believe the number of carbs I’m required to eat. So many carbs that my nutritionist advised I try milk shakes for breakfast — that my side of fries have to come with their own side of Lays potato chips.
Inevitably, it means my body’s changing every day — sometimes swelling, sometimes bloating, mostly just bread. I'm doing my best to be modern about it all, trying to realize the mindset Rihanna promoted when she said she was grateful for the “pleasure of a fluctuating body type.” I think this is a very beautiful sentiment, but with all due respect, this would be an easy thing to say if I looked like Rihanna. Really, it sucks most of the time. But then, when I’m feeling debilitated by how much it sucks, like when my favorite jeans don’t fit or when my ankles swell up over the tops of my socks, I try to remember how much better I feel now that I’m bigger. I can sleep, and I can focus, and I have boobs and a butt and I’m drinking chocolate milk and it tastes so good.
So my high-rise pants won’t pull up over my new butt, but therein lies a silver lining, too: I have an excuse to buy a whole new wardrobe — doctor’s orders. No waistbands, no zippers, no buttons, only kaftans. I want the only thing touching my body to be the little elastic cuffs on my puff-sleeves. Partly because I’m still working to like the shape of my body, partly to give it room to get better.
It's kaftan summer — join me, won’t you?
Kaftans to Wear When you Want to Feel Beautiful for Once
Heaven Dresses
These are dresses reminiscent of those worn in movie scenes where a beautiful dead woman (wife who died of cancer, wife who died in child-birth, beautiful elf-girl who died in battle with the Orcs) appears to the main character in a mossy glen, backed by the light of God herself. I would probably wear them to the Trader Joe’s — you get the same “heaven’s light” effect in the frozen section (backed by the glow of their veggie samosas).
(Azi Land, CO, Mimi Prober)
Tasteful ways to say “I am baby”
There’s nothing like walking down the street in a dress that makes me look like I’m coming from my own christening. A dress that, when bouncers at scary LES bars ask to see my ID, empower me to just hold up my fingers and say “I’m this many” and then do a little burp.
(Cecilie Bahnsen, Merlette, Cecilie Bahnsen)
Table-cloth dresses
It’s summer time! I want to gather the people I love around a spread of seasonal vegetables and tea lights and eat al-fresco! Oh no! No table cloth? Here take my beautiful block-printed mumu!
(Maria De La Orden, SZ Block Prints, Emily Levine)
The babysitter is sick so mom has to take off work and take us to the pool dresses
Pair perfectly with the black one-piece my mom has worn since the days when I was still peeing in the kiddie pool — 2017 feels like yesterday!
Tiers for Fears Dresses
Dresses with layers that match all this damn cake I have to eat.
*I’m realizing now that it probably never could and I think I was making my smoothies taste dusty for no reason.
If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, contact the helpline here.