The Woman’s Belly Book
by Lisa Sarasohn
(New World Library, $15.95 paper)
And you thought it was just a wasted roll of paunch? Think again. Lisa Sarasohn, yoga instructor and bodywork therapist, lays out a convincing argument for why we need to rethink our bellies; it’s not some shameful bulge but rather a repository of a woman’s powers.
1. The girdle is not mere lingerie but “an instrument of social control.”
2. “A woman’s belly … has its own story, its own trials and triumphs,” writes Sarasohn. “It stores messages that you’ve put on hold until you’re ready to attend to them. In its size and shape, as well as in the way it functions, your belly embodies the truth that’s central to your well-being.”
3. In the erotic imagination of Europe, we are told, it was impossible until the late 17th Century to have too big a belly. Dang!
4. The turning point in the American female belly, it seems, centers on the woman’s right to vote. Once allowed a role in “a man’s world,” Sarasohn posits, the ideal belly grew to be the invisible one.
5. A Virginia law still on the books in 1990 required a woman to wear a corset while dancing in public. If she danced sans corset, the dance hall could be shut down.
