If Your Husband Can't Accept Your Body, Throw The Whole Husband Out

I’ll be the first to admit it – I get naked a lot on Instagram. And it’s been getting a bit out of hand lately, to be honest. But I can’t help it. When you have a body as fabulous as mine is, you own that shit.

Now, you may be worrying that you’ll never be able to be as physically wonderful as moi. But never fear. You too can have a fabulous body! In case you’re wondering, a fabulous body (as defined in the book of me) is a body that’s attached to a human being.

Someone find me my mic, because I just dropped it.

About two years ago, I was standing in front of my reflection. And my mom bod was looking back at me, vulnerable as fuck. I had spent the better part of two decades struggling with disordered eating, body dysmorphia, and ongoing self-hate, all while appearing enviably skinny to the outside world.

Then I went and gained a whopping 75 pounds to grow both of my kids. As a result, my body had undeniably changed. And no matter what I attempted to force it back into thinness, it just wouldn’t budge. At first, I got pissed as hell at my body for seemingly betraying me, and I sat in a dirty laundry pile of shame for way too long.

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And that’s when it happened. For the first time in my life, I got the wacky idea to begin understanding why I was so dead set on pressuring myself to be thin for so damn long in the first place. Then I found the chutzpah deep within to do something really naughty, ya’all. I decided to stop trying to lose weight altogether. And hot damn, it feels good to be a happy, fat mama.

Suddenly, I found myself living with my middle fingers rebelliously pointed at the diet industry, and I started shaking my giant belly on social media to promote body acceptance at any size.

(Who the hell does this woman think she is?!)

Not only do I have zero plans to end these shenanigans, but you can all blame my ridiculous husband for why you see my big ass on Instagram. He’s the reason I finally stopped forcing myself to lose weight, and it’s high time I make an example out of him.

A few years ago, my husband Matt had the goddamn audacity to tell me that he loves and accepts me as I am, and that he finds me more attractive at the size I currently am than when I was bone thin. The nerve of some people!

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When he started patting my larger tush and making goo-goo eyes at me every day, I got really suspicious. Honestly, I thought Matt was making a joke of my weight gain. In my defense, both he and I were way skinnier when we went on our first date. And we each gained a good deal weight during my two pregnancies and amidst our sleep-deprived early parenthood days. But when I noticed my husband looking bigger, I honestly found it to be utterly adorable — and enjoyed having more of him to love.

Sadly, I couldn’t direct those positive feelings towards my own changing body.

And come on, you can’t blame me for openly embracing his extra cushion while shunning my own. Images of dad bods are literally trending right now on the internet. The chubby boy has started getting the girl in movies these days. And a man being physically bigger, while certainly stigmatized, is not looked at with nearly as much judgment as a woman existing in a fat body.

The most surprising thing to me has not been how much my husband accepts me whether I’m a teeny weeny size 4 or a Lizzo-lovin’ size 18. While that was certainly an unexcepted development, the true WTF moment has been when I realized that for Matt to love my newly plus-sized figure, he is becoming the exception to an outdated and disappointing status quo.

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The heartbreaking truth is, I’ve had so many mothers reach out to me on Instagram, confessing that while they’d love to feel good about themselves, their husbands are not on board with the physical changes they endured to become a mom. I’ve had countless women tearfully admit that their very own partners are refusing to have sex with them because of their new size. And I’ve had more than my fair share of wives begging me to help them love a body they don’t feel comfortable showing to their spouses.

Well, get ready. Because this mama bear is about to roooaaaar.

I have a question for all the hubbies out there who pull this kind of bullshit with their wives. Why has it become okay to only find your wife attractive while she is working to maintain the impossible feat of staying exactly the same throughout your marriage? How can you even look at your partner with anything other than awe at what her phenomenal, superhero bod did when she birthed your children? And why are ya’all choosing to be so short-sighted as to think that you can’t teach your man brains to lust for your wifey bears at any size?

Look, if you’re not going to keep your mojo running for your wife because she’s larger than when you met her in college, I’m more than happy to step in and tell her what an extraordinary body she has. Because no one should be made to feel that they are unlovable or undesirable simply because they’ve physically changed over the years.

And to the women reading this who see your husband in my words, I have a few things to say. If your spouse is pressuring you to erase the very evidence of what it took to bring your children into this world, he is missing the goddamn point. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – things like stretch marks and weight gain are not inherently bad, we have merely been conditioned as a culture to believe that they are. If your dude is spending more time convincing himself of reasons not to love the most recent version of you than he is on reasons why you are the best thing that ever happened to him, he needs a motherfucking wake up call.

Ladies, our bodies have always been designed to evolve. Despite what we have been taught, the physical evidence of our great, big life changes is a completely natural, admirable, and beautiful part of being female. And I’m talking about every single aspect of this stuff — even the very parts we have been shamed into hating.

And at the end of the day, aren’t we are so much more than our bodies, anyway? We women are living, breathing miracles, no matter whether we have children or not.

If your husband is creating hard and fast rules of what your naturally changing body “should” look like, then he will be spending a stupid amount of time missing out on the chance to get down and dirty with his strong, sexy, bomb ass wife. You deserve to be loved, adored, and desired at any size. I mean it. You are worthy of love from the moment you entered this world. The diet and beauty industries have done a number on our collective self-esteem. Let’s not allow our partners to make it even harder to love ourselves.

And if you ever need any more rambunctious pep talks to help you remember how amazing you are, come find me.