Chitra Ramaswamy

Published on Friday 5 June 2009 13:22

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman. These were the words my sister uttered the other morning. She wasn't referring to the glass ceiling, the unforgivably low rate of rape convictions, Susan Boyle, or the logistical nightmare of walking in heels on cobbles.

She was talking about our collective battle with the lady belly. Yes, that protruding podgy hill that every woman faces when she looks south, the perennial obstacle to the feet. I think of the lady belly as woman's worst friend, as loyal and keen to be fed and petted as a pup, but not quite as cute.

Having a belly if you're a man is a given, a rite of passage to maturity. It's there to be slapped, rubbed and to lay your head upon. It doubles up as a useful table for balancing a beer or a remote control and it always sees the sun on a hot day as last week will testify. Men even get a name of their own for their shameless tums. Beer bellies.

Women, though, are not supposed to have beer bellies. The only time our ovens are acceptable is when there's a seven pound bun in there. And by the time it's cooked and cooling on the rack, it's time to get back to flat. I tell you, it's exhausting.

A friend of mine just told me she's pregnant, and one of the first things she said was "it's amazing, for once I can't hold my belly in. I get to let it all hang out." I was so taken with the idea that I actually wished I was pregnant just so I could get nine months off the rigmarole of sucking it in all the time. Like I said, it's exhausting.

It's all this hot weather that's got me thinking. Driving out to Cove last weekend on the banks of Loch Long we passed pub after pub stowed with beer bellies, proud, nude, hairy and of a lobsterish hue. All the women, meanwhile, were clothed and nursing slimline gin and tonics. I looked down on my own companion for life, sighed and sucked in.

The really unfair part is that we're the ones who are supposed to have bellies. Our stomachs are meant to bloat every month and house babies with mini bellies of their own. We don't like sports but we do like sitting around having a natter and a cupcake. And damn it, this belly likes beer too.

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