Going for the gut

The posts on www.diet-blog.com are earnest:

"I am 14. My stomach is pretty flat until it gets to the lower section around my belly button. I am always self-conscious about it, but I don't know how to burn it off. I see a lot of other girls at my school whose stomachs are perfectly flat, and I wish I had one too. Is there any secret exercise they use?"

In her 1997 book, "The Body Project," author Joan Jacobs Brumberg chronicles young women's quests for physical perfection through the ages. No surprise that weight is a constant, unifying concern. But an intriguing pattern emerges: Every generation, it seems, finds itself fixated with one specific body part. The "sweater girls" of the 1950s emphasized an ample bosom. The "jeaning of America," she writes, led to a preoccupation with lean legs and a 1980s angst over "thunder thighs" that spilled into the 1990s, when "the real heat is on the lower body, especially thighs and buttocks."

After this long, winding historical obsession with the female anatomy, an argument can be made that our body part du jour is the midriff — toned and tight and on display, belly buttons dotting our pop-cultural landscape. And it can be said that this era of the flat, trim tummy was ushered in by Britney Spears — back when her (now pregnant) belly was doing other things and it seemed no one could convince her to put on a full-length shirt. But the emphasis remains, with current fashion making a taut, lean midsection a must-have style accessory all its own.

It's the area of the body Howard Stern likes to pick on when talking about females on his radio show. It's fodder for late-night weight-loss infomercials, the hallmark of the newest fitness regimens like Pilates that focuses on strengthening the midsection or "core."

The flatter, the leaner, the tighter, the better.

And if you think it's a subject relegated to the minds of the mindless, consider it was the centerpiece of playwright-performer Eve Ensler's 2004 work "The Good Body" — her exploration of female body consciousness via her rocky relationship with her ample, fleshy midsection.

"It's always one of the top-three areas of concern for women, if not the biggest. Consistently, it's abs, butt and thighs," says Janet Lee, deputy fitness editor at Shape magazine. "When it comes down to why, it's tough to say. It's kind of a sign of fitness when you have a flat belly. It just kind of screams, 'I'm fit. I'm in shape.' "

If bellies can indeed scream such things, the loudest of the bunch belongs now to Janet Jackson. Us Weekly recently trumpeted her latest weight-loss success story with a slick cover photo that showcased her newly chiseled abs. (Lipo: Did she, or didn't she?) It was one of the glossy's best-selling covers, says Sasha Charnin Morrison, the magazine's fashion director.

It's a body part to expose "if you've really worked hard. You really have to be fit," she says.

But why is that? How did it come that only the leanest of midsections bears revealing? Why are women fighting the natural, soft curve of their bellies — once considered desirable in the days of the ample Rubenesque beauties — in favor of a more masculine, washboard look?

"We are being sold an image of what sexy is. Putting it in historical context, we used to be told that what was sexy was a full, robust Botticelli kind of figure," says Shira Tarrant, assistant professor of women's studies at California State University, Long Beach. "Now media forces are stronger than they ever were, and we're being told that what's sexy is a flat stomach, among other things."

It's a peculiar message, given that the female belly is so symbolically connected to the swell of reproduction. But that may be just the allure — a flat belly untainted by childbirth.

"It fits the whole general pattern that female bodies are for display and consumption, not really for pregnancy and childbirth," says Tarrant, author of "When Sex Became Gender."

"It sends a really powerful message to young girls about what the expectation of beauty is and what their bodies are for — and who they're for."

Look to the lexicon for evidence of this preoccupation with the female midriff, says Tarrant. Recall the thunder thighs and saddle bags and "cankles" of yesteryear (that last one, for the uninitiated, would be chubby calves and ankles)?

Today we have "muffin tops." That's the area that spills from the squeeze of low-rise jeans, not unlike the puff of a muffin.

Consider: 96 percent of patients who elected for tummy-tuck surgery last year were women, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports. The number of procedures jumped 113 percent from 2000.