Selena Gomez showing off her stomach is more groundbreaking than it sounds

metro.co.uk:

supports HTML5 videoWho would have thought a tummy – Selena Gomez’s no less – could be the catalyst to saving us all from ourselves?Ok, I may be getting ahead of myself, but the actress and singer has whipped people up into quite the frenzy after declaring, with meme backing, as she is wont to do, ‘real stomachs is coming the f**k back, ok?’In a TikTok this week, Selena was seen reclining on a boat (#richpeople am I right?) in a one-piece and rubbing her tummy while insisting she’s ‘not sucking s**t in’.While I’m usually resistant to celebrating such a thing as ‘woman simply exists’, the comments from her followers have got me thinking.‘You make me feel comfortable in my own skin,’ one proclaimed, while others mused of the ‘refreshing’ nature of her body positivity.If more celebrities and influencers took a leaf out of Selena’s book of body positivity, I’d go so far as to say there would be no such thing as ‘body positivity’ – everyone would be thriving in their own skin without making a thing about it.Yes that sounds very pie-in-the-sky thinking, but we’re dealt with an influx of filtered and fabricated physiques that have employed more special effects than a Marvel film, which makes it impossible to know what is real or not on our timelines anymore.And as much as activists are turning the tide in their own circles, it’s gonna take someone like Selena – who breaks through the echo chamber with her 42.5million followers on TikTok, after once boasting the most followers on Instagram before Cristiano Ronaldo and his 473million ran onto the pitch and nabbed that trophy – to shift the message.As one responded to her clip, ‘you don’t realise how much this video helps us young women’ and, scepticism back in its box, by job I.