Oh Muffin Top

Okay, laugh time over. Here’s where i get serious. Can you handle serious?

Ah yes. Muffin top, oh muffin top, do you know the muffin top? So tasty and loved in pastry form, so delightedly reviled and mocked in human flesh. The moment that a famous actress or woman in the public eye bends over or decides to wear an outfit too snug and a tiny bit of flesh puckers at all around her waistband, photographers are there to snap that brief glimpse of humanity, that tiny little “flaw”, that raging muffin top threatening all of civilization as we know it! Obesity articles and news briefs seem to get some sort of little orgasmic thrill when they happen upon the perfect picture of muffin-topped goodness, some unsuspecting woman with a roll of body that happens to fall outside the dictated norms of acceptance as well as the confines of her waistband.

What is this slang slander “Muffin Top” you ask? It is when you refer to a woman’s stomach which is pinched and hanging out/extending beyond the waist of her pants in a visible way. Top number one reason FOR said “Muffin Top”? Your pants are too tight.* Instead of bemoaning how eating a few bites of food you like might make you even MORE uncomfortable than you already are, here’s a revolutionary new idea. It won’t even take more time than a trip to your usual clothing store. It won’t cost as much as trying in vain to diet your way back INTO (or DOWN to if you are wearing silly “inspiration” pants) that painful, belly-pressing pair of pants. You ready to find out my sure-fire secret?

Buy a pair of pants that fit.

Ta dah! I know. Shockingly revolutionary. With my amazing free advice, you too can avoid the painful compression and resultant “shocking” visual “blight” that is the “Muffin Top”. And by “Fit” I do NOT mean “the pair that I could manage to barely snap together”. No. Bad! Be KIND to your body! Get over that internal crisis that you’re waging with yourself over that arbitrary pant size label. Get the next size, or the next, whatever it takes. Feel the freedom and pleasure of getting OUT of tiny pants and into ones that allow you to move and breathe with comfort.

That said though, if you are a person who LIKES to wear waist-cinching, belly-poppingly tight pants and enjoy the resultant muffin-y top (hey, some of us like to wear corsets now and again too despite the discomfort and perhaps because of the breast emphasizing feature); then that is your right too. Or perhaps your body is just shaped so that regardless of the fact that you’re wearing pants that aren’t snug enough to cut off circulation to your spleen, you will still have this muffin above your pants; this soft roll of beautiful flesh that adorns that space above your waistband. You know what, embrace it and smile because you know you’re wearing what you WANT (not what someone else (even me) has TOLD you that you should want to wear), and you have the right and privilege to do so without outsiders commenting in any way. So I’m going to also give a free tip to those who are so mortally morally offended at the sight of these “rampant” muffin tops. Ready for it?

Stop looking at it.

That’s right. Two simple pieces of advice. If you don’t like HAVING “Muffin Top” that is caused by constricting pants; buy pants that fit. If you don’t like SEEING “Muffin Tops”, regardless of whether they are the result of tight pants or naturally shaped body forms, then don’t look. If it isn’t your body, you get no inherent right to critique it or comment upon it. There. Free and easy.

I return you now to your regularly scheduled afternoon. Anyone want to go out for some muffins? I’m buying. I have this inexplicable yearning for a blueberry muffin right now.