I Dressed Like Me for 10 Years: Day 6

If you don’t want to read a bunch of body stuff, I get it!!! Don’t read this.

I’ve been hounded online by a concept, complete with a catchy name and an arresting visual: “apron belly.”

The term started appearing on my TikTok and Instagram earlier this year attached to upbeat ads¹ showing, invariably, a woman’s sagging stomach. The titular belly — which hangs somewhat over the legs, I guess thereby protecting one’s thighs from kitchen mess? — may have a human head attached but just as likely does not. It’s grabbed from the bottom by its possessor, who lifts and jiggles for emphasis. Suddenly, the belly evaporates!, thanks to the application of whatever outer-layer shapewear is being sold, which sucks the offending mass up and in. There’s never any mention of how crushed the belly’s body’s organs are, but the question hangs in the air.

I started to notice these dehumanizing clips at the same time I clocked a change in my own body that I wasn’t particularly trying to name. In the beginning of 2025, I switched my diet from “eating basically whatever I want basically all the time” to “eating definitely whatever I want certainly all the time, plus a little extra because I feel scared and sad,” and by summer, I was seeing that change pay off. “Worried about apron belly?” the caption asks. I am now!

Purveyors of the phrase “apron belly” have wanted to sell me leggings and dresses, baggy linen pants and “baddie” jeans, bike shorts and extra long sweaters. Soon apron belly will partner with Ryan Reynolds to sign me up for a cheap cell phone plan.

The endless videos of stomachs monster-trucking faceless women’s pancreases seem to be affecting the way I approach my own body. When no one is around, I face the mirror sideways and cup my midsection flop, displaying its weight gently like a farm auctioneer. Strangely, I never feel like bidding.

Was this a new idea, or had the algorithm had ascertained correctly that it was a newish appendage for me? I felt paranoid, dogged, trapped, and possibly seen.

A very scientific look at Google Trends shows “apron belly” first popping up back in 2011, but not really taking on steam until 2021, then skyrocketing over the last three years. If anything, it dropped rather precipitously right when became aware of it, so most likely, I’m just interacting with the ads more. But it’s embrace by marketers is a post-body positivity innovation. You would never have seen an ad like these in 2015.

When I wrote I Dressed Like Me for a Week, I didn’t say a word about my body. Part of that was because, at 30, I actually had accepted and even learned to love parts of myself that seemed like death penalty offenses in the 2000s. But part was that at the time, we had as a culture just crested over the first, often freeing wave of mainstream body positivity, and were heading into an era of shiny inescapable marketing² and soft online feelings where I was very, very afraid to express any misgivings about my own figure for fear of the harm I was doing to others. It was a self-conscious time for being self-conscious! I found it harder to adhere to any kind of improved diet or exercise plan in that period because I felt inhibited about talking about it — if I’m doing anything, you better believe I’m talking about it.

The culture moved on (to body neutrality! to pandemic workouts! to GLP-1s and the end of woke!) but I never really snapped out of the anxiety and repression I developed in the mandatory self-love era. Ten years out, I get stuck on how to approach the ratio of fat to muscle to feelings bobbling along inside of me. With a recent weight gain and a new SEO-friendly invective to punch myself in the gut with, it hasn’t been a great year on that front.

I saw this movie on Monday that’s out this week, Eternity³, and had a bit of clarifying moment, though. In Eternity’s vision of the afterlife, you look the way you looked at your happiest. I found myself thinking, reflexively, “wow, I hope I was happiest when I was thinner, so I can be hot when I’m dead.”

JESUS! Sometimes, I actually do hear myself.

I can hear how incredibly sad it is that I would prefer to never again be happier than I’ve ever been before, just because I don’t like my body as much these days as I did when I was 26 and Weight Watching.

I can also hear that if my current body bums me out so much, that’s something to acknowledge instead of ignore. Any therapist would tell you that you actually need to be able to experience and process your full range of emotions. You’re an actress, you have all of them! My body negativity hasn’t gone away, despite years of being shushed and stuffed, so it’s probably in the way of my next transcendent level of happiness.

I did get one other thing from TikTok, from another stupid ad no less. This one was trying to sell me an exercise band, and said, “If you do 100 leg raises a day, your belly will tighten.” I already had an exercise band (from the pandemic, obviously), so this is my thing now; my attempt at control and choice and not just fearfully hoping things I don’t like will go away naturally. I’ve been doing it for about a week, and when I stand sideways in the mirror, well, nothing much has changed. But I feel lighter already.

I said I was going to dress better today FOR THIS, FOR YOU, but instead I wore sweatpants out of the house, violating a personal rule:

I told myself was that I was dressing worse now so I could dress better later. This is what I’m wearing currently:

Maybe for the last one tomorrow! No promises!!