This is my tribute to the belly button, in honor of my friend who just lost hers. Well, temporarily anyway. I think bellybuttons are weird. They are very much a functional requirement of humans and yet we have turned them into an aesthetic feature.
- Girls wear their jeans low to show off their navels.
- Boys do crazy crunches to make their navels firmer.
- Girls do exercises on balls to make their stomachs flatter.
- Boys rid their chests and stomachs of hair to highlight muscle tone.
- Girls pierce their belly buttons to draw more attention to, and accessorize, the navel.
The thing is, the only reason you have a bellybutton is because that’s where the umbilical cord was attached while you were in the womb and it gave you food. Post birth, it was cut, knotted and left to dry of your body, looking like a shriveled turd while it waited to fall off. It’s a scar of sorts! And yet here we are celebrating, flaunting and accessorizing the darn things.
People will argue over which kind of bellybutton is better: innie or outtie.
People will ask if Adam and Eve had bellybuttons at all.
And, I guess, people will notice when their bellybuttons disappear, even if it’s only temporarily.
Comments are closed.