Why Hot Girls Have Tummy Issues

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

If you’re on social media at all, I’m sure you’ve heard some variation of the phrase “Hot Girls Have Tummy Issues”. This phrase is intended to be cheeky, helping those of us with IBS by normalizing its symptoms and using dark humor to cope. As someone who loves dark humor, I know that every joke has some truth to it. As a former trauma therapist, I have a much deeper understanding of why this phrase is so often true.

Some of my closest girlfriends have heard my theory about why all hot girls have IBS, based on my knowledge about our nervous systems and the brain-gut connection. Ironically, I’ve hesitated to make my theory public, due to the experience of being a “hot girl”. I am very aware of how I might be perceived writing about the challenges of being good looking. Anytime an influencer or public figure even hints at this idea - that being attractive can be a stressor - critics point to “pretty privilege”, the benefits that being conventionally attractive affords us in our unfortunately shallow world. But this is the plight of the “hot girl” - we’re often put on a pedestal and criticized when we have thoughts, feelings, and needs. Often, the world sees us as one dimensional, unable to hold that we can experience both advantages AND disadvantages due to our looks. Not to mention the utter shock people seem to have when we have depth, intelligence, and a sense of humor.

If a woman is considered to be conventionally attractive, they’re constantly put on display without their consent. I had my first period in 5th grade, and was one of the only girls with breasts in my class until late middle school. Just because of how I looked, I was labeled a “slut” before I even knew what the word actually meant. I hated the attention my new body brought me. I quickly grew accustomed to adult men catcalling me from their cars as I walked home from elementary school. In 6th grade, I reflexively broke a boy’s nose when he groped both of my breasts from behind. When the assault happened, I was minding my own business on the school bus; eager to get home after rumors were spread about me that I was pregnant with twins, just because I had kissed a boy.

I learned that being “hot” made this world inherently unsafe for me before I was comfortable enough in my body to believe I actually was “hot”. When someone lives in an unsafe world for years, especially when their nervous system isn’t fully developed, it actually disrupts normal development of the brain and body. This experience makes it much more difficult to regulate the nervous system as an adult. The chronic stress and hypervigilance caused by years of nonconsensual objectification doesn’t just manifest in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. It also manifests somatically through autoimmune diseases, chronic pain and migraines, and other chronic illnesses, like IBS.

Irritable bowel syndrome is very common in people who experience chronic stress. IBS is linked to anxiety disorders, PTSD and C-PTSD. When the body is under extreme stress, like in the case of the disorders I named, it releases cortisol. If the experience of stress is prolonged over time, it can permanently inhibit the body’s stress response, keeping the person in a state of constant hyperarousal. This disrupts normal digestion, causes muscle tension throughout the body, including in the muscles around the digestive system, and changes blood flow in the digestive tract. Since the brain and gut are so closely linked, the body becomes hyper-sensitive to any activity in the gut - just as it learns to be hypersensitive to the world around it.

Source: United Digestive (2025)

You may have noticed that I began this article essentially apologizing for being “hot”, by acknowledging that it has its advantages. That behavior is the perfect example of the hypervigilance I’m describing. Not only am I hyperaware of how this article might be perceived, I started preparing for the potential negative responses before I began writing it. I’m used to being overly critiqued for everything I do, and as a result often over-explain myself reflexively. That, in and of itself, is a trauma response. Chronic hypervigilance has trained me to think of every possible worst case scenario before it happens. As a result, it was my automatic response to brace and prepare for the criticism that will likely come. Since the 5th grade, I’ve repeatedly been taught that others are allowed to objectify me and talk about my looks, but it’s considered bad taste for me to do the same.

The inspiration for this article actually came out of the deep frustration I’ve been feeling about the way I’ve been responded to, particularly by cis-het men and het-presenting couples, since starting this business. Being openly sex positive while conventionally attractive has led to objectification that I, perhaps naively, did not expect to experience on what is clearly a business social media account. A week ago, I created my own sex-positive version of the “kinda chic” trend on Instagram, using pictures of myself. I was so triggered by my DMs that I had to write this to process my anger instead of doing the work I had originally planned for the day. The most ironic part is that the picture that received the most objectifying responses was the one that celebrated saying “no” - the perfect representation of the nonconsensual objectification that I, like most other “hot girls”, experience every single day. But as a result of over two decades of victim blaming, I started to question if this is all my fault, if I should present myself more conservatively, like I did as a therapist; or if I’m just “asking for it”?

Source: Freeform Coaching (2025)

Even though it makes me a target for harassment and criticism, I refuse to tone down my looks, my sexuality, my intelligence or my anger. To tone it down would change nothing, and only continue to give legitimacy to the misogyny that’s fueled my tummy issues since childhood. I’m not going to wear more clothes, I’m not going to be less vulnerable, and I’m not going to apologize for who I am, because to do so would be the antithesis to everything I teach. Every time I embrace all parts of myself - including the “hot girl” - and unapologetically put them on public display, it’s for anything but the “male gaze”. Catering to the “male gaze” under patriarchy would mean that I hide myself, unless a man is in control. I’m not just open about my sexuality because I help others embrace their own for a living. It’s because embracing one’s sexuality is a part of being a complete and whole being. And being seen as a whole person, for a woman, is an act of resistance.

Thanks for reading Freeform Coaching for Conscious Non-Monogamy! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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