Blog #5: Oh Stretch Marks

            My sister pulls her shirt up to underneath her breasts so that we can see her watermelon tummy. It is so large that I can’t help but think that something other than a baby must be hiding in there. Red, as bright as fire, squiggly lines run up and down her stomach, just like how green ones run up watermelons. Treena, my sister, has me put my hand on her stomach, feeling for a little kick. The little red worms were like outlines of where to place my hand. Deeply embedded and run tight. Tiger Stripes. After nine months of carrying a baby and four hours of hard labor, she earned every one of those tiger stripes. Her bravery and strength defined in every one.

When, you think of scars, you think of someone’s uniqueness. You think of how that separates them from any other person. A scar shows something painful you went through, and survived in the end. If you Google stretch marks, the first thing to find is how to remove them. Stretch marks are also scars, but why are these scars ones that no one feels pride for?  When someone receives these marks it is merely a representation of rapid growth or weight change.

If I take off my shirt, I also see those same squiggly lines run up my love handles and run from my armpits to the outside of my breasts. I used to think that these stripes aren’t something that I earned. They are things that I actually worked hard not to receive. Scars are supposed to show that you’ve gone through something painful and gotten through it. If I think about it, my tiger stripes were given to me when I went back to school and no longer had a B cup but went to a full flown DD. Those tiger stripes were given to me for holding my head high as I went from a lanky adolescent to an hourglassed woman. These battle scars are proof that I lived through those stares, through the not being able to wear the same size of jeans, through the being sized in the middle of Victoria’s Secret. Head held high, chin pointing towards the sky, representing my stripes with pride.