For many of us, it’s a big deal to bare our body at the beach. Whether or not anyone is actually looking at you, it FEELS like they are.
So when mother-of five blah blah, decided to wear a bikini for the first time since having kids, she was understandably wary. What happened next was her (and every woman’s) worst nightmare.
All because her stomach looked like this:
But Jex-Blake has managed to get her revenge.
She published the above image along with an open letter to her three taunters on her Facebook page.
Her letter read:
This is an open letter to the 2 guys and 1 girl who decided to skip work today in Sherwood Park where they were building a house, but instead decided to come to Alberta Beach to relax in the sun, enjoy the water and some beers.
I’m sorry if my first attempt at sun tanning in a bikini in public in 13 years “grossed you out”. I’m sorry that my stomach isn’t flat and tight. I’m sorry that my belly is covered in stretch marks. I’m NOT sorry that my body has housed, grown, protected, birthed and nurtured FIVE fabulous, healthy, intelligent and wonderful human beings. I’m sorry if my 33 year old, 125 lb body offended you so much that you felt that pointing, laughing, and pretending to kick me.
But I’ll have you know that as I looked at your ‘perfect’ young bodies, I could only think to myself “what great and amazing feat has YOUR body done?”. I’ll also have you know that I held my head high, unflinching as you mocked me, pretending that what you said and did had no effect on me; but I cried in the car on the drive home. Thanks for ruining my day.
It’s people like you who make this world an ugly hateful place. I can’t help but feel sorry for the women who will one day bear your children and become “gross” in your eyes as their bodies change during the miraculous process of pregnancy. I can only hope that one day you’ll realize that my battle scars are something to be proud of, not ashamed of.
The selfie and the letter have since gone completely viral. They have 3,500 shares from her personal Facebook page alone, and with the help of local radio station Hot 107 Edmonton, the number of people who have read her words and viewed her selfie is estimated to have exceeded 14 million.
The image’s popularity is heartening. It’s great to see that people across the world know that very few stomachs look like those we see in magazines. That they understand that stretch marks are a completely normal part of the human body, and substantially more prevalent than media representations of women’s bodies let on.
Hopefully, all of the attention means that the three people who taunted Jex-Blake will start to understand this, too.
Top Comments
This mom has a lot of courage, and she is grown and entitled to do what she wants. However, I am left wondering why? Why is it becoming a trend to share intimate body parts with the world?
I am a middle aged woman who has never had children and I know this is going to sound naive but until I subscribed to mamamia I had no idea what stretch marks looked like. It's only because there have been a few other articles here showing photos. I had certainly heard women talking about stretch marks but I just thought that must mean a bit of a fat tummy. None of my female relatives who have kids have them, and I obviously don't have them either.
So the first time I saw a photo here on mamamia of another wise slim woman with stretch marks I must say I was quite shocked. I know it sounds incredibly naive but I honestly had no idea that's what bad stretch marks look like. I've got to be honest and say I found it well confronting. However perhaps if it was something we all saw more often I and others would get used to it and not find it a big deal. It just goes to show how little body variety is put on display if at my age I had never seen a stretch mark before, and it also shows how more body variety should be shown in our media, in real life etc so that seeing stretch marks wouldn't seem so off putting and it was considered normal. Of course there is no excuse for those jerks who insulted that lady but if there was a bit more reality in the media maybe stretch marks wouldn't attract so much negative attention.
Ive never seen stretchmarks on women in our family either. but if they had, they wouldn't show them off.