@ashleyjames: The world looks at a mum’s body and sees something to fix, but our children look at it as their first home and love it. Watching Ada look at herself in the mirror stops me in my tracks. She looks at herself with curiosity, pride, delight. She doesn’t judge her body, or think that it needs to shrink or be corrected. She’s not been taught to see it as flawed. That used to be me too. And every little girl, before the world got hold of us. Motherhood has made me see, in real time, how confidence is something we are born with and how deliberately it is taken away. Especially when it comes to our bodies. The moment you give birth, the conversation turns to “losing the baby weight”, as if your body has finished its job now. As if growing life, carrying it, sustaining it is something to erase and move on from. Otherwise you’ll have ‘let yourself go’. I grew up watching women be measured and weighed, praised for disappearing, and restricting themselves of food and punishing themselves with movement. As if our bodies only matter while they are useful to someone else, and if they are the most shrunken version of themselves. And then there is this special moment. Suddenly, someone who sees my tummy as more than a 'mum tum’ to be judged. This is how my daughter sees my tummy. It’s the place she grew. Her first home. A place of comfort, safety, love. So it’s probably no surprise she loves it. It’s also soft and squishy to cuddle. “Girls love tummies”, she said. I wish that was always true. It’s a little reminder that our bodies are not problems to be solved. They are the carriers of our souls. They are what allow us to love, hug, kiss, climb mountains, dance, create, survive. Babies or not, we should never have learned to hate something so magical. Our bodies ARE magical. Watching her love herself so freely is exactly why I wrote BIMBO. Because if we are not born with shame, then it must be taught… and that means it can be untaught too. #fyp #bounceback #bodypositivity

Ashley James

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Region: GB

Thursday 29 January 2026 10:36:24 GMT