Stretch marks are beautiful?

You know what I'm tired of seeing?

Touchy feely write-ups/memes/videos/you name its about how "beautiful" stretch marks are. The kind one develops while carrying a child within their womb.

I don't care how you spin it, THOSE THINGS ARE NOT PRETTY. No amount of, "every mark I have reminds me of the time I carried you" sappiness will every change that. You know what else carrying a baby did to my body? Let's not go there. Let's just say that those things aren't pretty either. Neither can they be glamorized as reminders of pregancy. Ain't nothing glamorous about them.

I am all too aware that I carried a child within my womb. It wakes me up every morning by slamming a remote control on my face. It cries when I leave a room, and pitifully races after me on its hands and knees....sometimes just one knee. It looks like the spitting image of my husband. It will call me "Momma" whenever it learns how to talk. It has my heart so fully within her grasp, that I can't even fathom a time when she wasn't with me, and my heart wants to explode when I think about trying to measure my love for her.

Let's look at stretch marks for what they are: battle scars. Yeah, sure, scars are cool and all that, but that's exactly what they are. Fleshy, wonky, and ugly leftovers from war. And it isn't like each time one (or a million) cropped up we go, "Awww...I will treasure YOU forever, little purple lightning bolt". Thoughts tend to be less tender than that.

Is there such thing as a genuinely pretty scar? I contend that there is not.

Are all scars cool? HECK YES.

Do I proudly display the ones I have in exposable places, simply because they are cool? You bet I do.

This may all sound like bitter ranting, and I'm sure you're all thinking, "Poor Emily, bless her little heart. She must feel so self-conscious and unhappy with her stretch marks". Or worse, "Ugh, Emily is so ungrateful. I can't believe she'd complain about something like stretch marks. That's part of having a baby!". PRECISELY. It's just part of having a baby for a huge percentage of women. I understand the motive behind the "stretch marks are beautiful reminders" movement. Women tend to be self-conscious about their bodies, and some have a harder time coping with the atrocities child-bearing can leave behind (believe you me, I KNOW how that goes).

I agree that it is important that women learn to love and accept their bodies, new designs and all. But I will be hanged if I am told one more time that I need to appreciate these stupid stretch marks. "But honey, stretch marks are simply beautiful reminders of the life you brought into this world". Ohmuhgosh. Stop. Would I trade them for my beautiful baby? Never in a million years. Trillion years. Never. I would take stretch marks on my face if it meant getting that gorgeous daughter of mine. But do I have to appreciate them? The same way I appreciate my body's new ability to not hold its pee until I get to a bathroom, despite my direct orders to do so? The same way I appreciate some other cosmetic changes that we won't get into? Heavens, no.

I'll never appreciate them, cherish them, or be proud of them. They did not carry the baby, I did. I am indescribably proud of my body for that.

My body is amazing, stretch marks and other new quirks notwithstanding.