A Piercing Look

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Oh yes touch me just there…. are words you are never going to hear me say about my belly button.

I have a lot of erogenous/sensitive areas on my body aside from genitals and breasts, my back, my arm pits, my neck, across the front of my thighs to name just a few but my belly button is not one of them. Add to the fact that my belly button is dab smack in the centre of my tummy, a part of my body that I continue to have very conflicting feelings about and the result is at best indifference on bad days active dislike.

My belly button does not sit perfectly round and pretty in the middle of my tummy, I have a very large abdominal scar from major surgery when I was child that runs into my navel, also having two children and being significantly overweight at one point in my life has left it rather wrinkled and puckered. You know those perfect tummies that you see all over the media, on Tumblr and increasingly Instagram too, where they are smooth and flat with little cute belly buttons, well those images are powerful I think because in mind that is how it should look, that is how I should look and I don’t and no matter how many stomach crunches I do I am never going to look like that. The only possible solution would be cosmetic surgery and even if I was swimming in money I don’t think I would do that. Somehow that would feel like betraying myself and what I believe in when it comes to bodies and size and shapes and age. Sexy is more than just a flat stomach and a perfectly placed belly button, it is more than perky firm breasts, sculpted legs, long necks and shaved armpits. I know that is the truth and I know that applies to my body just as much as to anyone else but still there are days when I look down at my belly and sigh.

One of the things I have always wanted is to get my belly button pierced. I think they look so beautifully sexy on women but then I look at my tummy, compare it to the pictures of women I see with their belly button pierced and realise that I am never going to look like that so what’s the point? This was not always the case, when I was younger the reason I didn’t get it done was quite simply because I was not brave enough but now I have the bravery I am just lacking the flat stomach. The belly button piercing conversation happens fairly regularly in this house and goes something like this

Me: I would love to get my belly button pierced

Him: So get your belly button pierced

Me: No, my tummy is too wrinkly and what is the point when I would never show it off to anyone

Him: Because you want to do it for you, so do it

Me: Nah, I am too old. I should have done it when I was younger

Him: *heavy sigh

Recently though things have started change. I am not sure if it just because he has said it so many times now that it is finally sinking in or if I am increasingly getting into the ‘fuckit’ mind set. I suspect it is a combination of the two but I do know that I don’t want to be sitting my arm-chair as an elderly old lady still wishing that I had got my belly button pierced and so when in the summer he asked me if this was like my nose piercing and I just needed him to step up and make it so, I shrugged my shoulders and said maybe.

Yesterday he told me that for Christmas this year he was planning on getting me an experience rather than an actual gift you can wrap up but as a result he needed me to know what was going on.

I am getting my belly button pierced

Part of me is hugely excited by this prospect. Just writing that sentence made me grin but there is a part of me that is nervous about actually getting it done, although the nose one was fine so I am sure this will be too but also there is that doubt that I am just being utterly ridiculous trying to relive a youth that is long gone. I my head I wonder if the piercer is going to secretly laughing at the plump wrinkly middle age women coming to get her belly button pierced. That thought makes me cringe and want to curl up in a ball and never get it done. BUT if I am ever going to get this done then now is the time and so fuck all that to the ends of the earth. For Christmas I am going to get my belly button pierced.