I was browsing a dictionary site tonight. (Don’t ask. OK, I’m a bit Aspie around dictionaries. But anyway.)

This ad kept coming up. ‘Why your stomach is fat….Lose your ugly belly’.

Excuse me?

Ugly?

It was a personal trainer selling some guaranteed ‘abs’ method. But hey, that’s incredibly strong language to use for a whole bunch of people you don’t even know. They might be nice people. They might invite you to dinner. Are you going to sit there eating their peach cobbler and going ‘Hmm, she could do with losing the belly’? (No, on second thoughts, he sounds like the kind of guy who’d run screaming from the very idea of peach cobbler. Which, at this time of year, is actually rather sad.)

There are a lot of bellies out there for him to hate on. Most of them are…you know…soft. Squeezable. Have something on them other than pure muscle (and the only time I ever saw anyone with nothing but muscle on their bellies, they were in anatomy books, and if you want to get in the sack with the Visible Man that’s your concern, but…whatever.)

Out of interest, as I was geeking around in a dictionary, I looked up the word ‘ugly’.

It can mean unpleasing to the eye, which was undoubtedly what this gentleman might think of my belly (and very possibly yours).

However, it has a bunch of other meanings which include offensive, morally repulsive, threatening, embarrassing, tending towards anger or bad feelings, and if you are in the deep South, rude.

I tend to be in agreement with the good folks of Alabama on this one. While health is undoubtedly a great thing to have, washboards are for skiffle bands. And if you’re that concerned about other people’s bellies, you’re either trying to make money off them, or you’re not having nearly enough fun with yours. ;)