Female bodies, at least around here, have changed dramatically since I was a kid. Let me be blunt: ladies, you are not looking so hot.

If you travel into Brentwood or Pacific Palisades on a weekday morning, cruise Montana Avenue in Santa Monica or north Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills, or stop by the Malibu Country Mart on the Pacific Coast Highway, you will be treated to glimpses of near-ideal female physiques. You may spot the starlets and trophy wives of the west side emerge from Pilates and yoga classes and slip into their waiting Range Rovers. These shapes, slender and toned, are now in America the exclusive domain of the very rich, the mostly white. Women who have paid surrogates to birth their children and wellness experts to wring every last ounce of excess off their thighs. If you read the Daily Mail, it’s always the Kates: Beckinsale, Middleton, Moss (still slaying)—perhaps with a Rosie Huntington-Whitely thrown in to spice things up. Leave it to the English to preserve our now-discarded traditional fantasy beauty standards.

Meanwhile, outside of these fabulous A-list enclaves, your unhappy eyeballs must contend with a…different species of female body. This more globular version is what the zaftig journalist Tania Lavin has unsparingly dubbed “blob body.”

Blob body is everywhere these days: short, pear-shaped, with a massive derriere squeezed into cheap jeggings at least three sizes too small, an oversized cell phone crushed inside a back pocket, screen threatening to crack from the torque. They are not curvy; they are one single curved line that takes the shape of an oblong. (From the waist up, things get even messier. Best not to discuss that here.)

Many of the blob-bodied seem quite proud of their shapelessness and dress accordingly, in far less fabric than I would like. I didn’t even know they made G-strings out of jean shorts, but apparently they do.

Is this the Lizzo/WAP effect? The Kardashian-inspired supersize-my-rump effect? Or simply the three-caramel-Frappuccinos-a-day-extra-whipped-cream effect?

Blob is also how most of the moms at the neighborhood public elementary present themselves every day at pick up. These women are the ones you’d least like to see in crop tops and boob tubes, which many of them wear. I suspect many of them have Only Fans pages. After all, someone’s got to be in the bottom 95% of earners!

At least these blob ladies don’t fill me with envy. I feel positively svelte, waiflike even, a heroin chic supermodel when I am facing down one more gargantuan hindquarters jostling in front of me at Target. Only after I’d shed the last few pregnancy pounds after my final baby, basically reclaimed my waist, and shoehorned myself into the same pant size I was on my wedding day did I discover enormous rumps were in fashion.

How do they find pants to fit their haunches? I wouldn’t know where to look! But everyone knows blob positivity is pure cope: nobody wants a body you have to convince yourself to love. So at least the blobgirls do more for my self-esteem than gazing at yet another paparazzi photo of Kaia Gerber emerging from yet another core class. Thank you, blobs!

Now, you may be asking what right I have to judge these women, when I myself am far from perfect? Well, must a great art critic also a be a great artist? I may be far from perfect, but we can all agree that the blobs are no good. No good for the poor ladies trapped inside them, and no good for society. No one enjoys being a blob. It doesn’t look fun and it can’t be comfortable! So why are we pushing blob acceptance on women? Maintaining such high national blob levels will only lead to more unhappiness, depression, loneliness, lower fertility, and overall cultural aesthetic decay.

Don’t misinterpret me: I’m not saying we should all be like Hollywood anorexics keeping the pounds off with cocaine and Adderral. Or like the plastic reality stars with their artificially inflated toochises filled with silicon. But we must find a happier middle ground for our midsections, somewhere between unattainable pulchritude and unsightly porcinitude.

And I believe I’ve found it. I’m dropping a new body this summer: American Mom Bod.

This is the body that somehow, miraculously produced offspring into the world, doesn’t sweat perfection, and uses the Peloton in the bedroom mostly to hang delicates to dry.

This is the body that has a defined waist, but whose chiseled abs (or hopes thereof) have long since faded into the mists of time. This is the body that has successfully completed the big jobs, like carrying numerous newborns to term, and the heavy lifting toddlerhood requires, and maintained its overall superstructure in a dignified, graceful manner. Now, let it be the body that carries you into the future and yes, old age, with courage, strength, and perhaps, on a good day, a bit of beauty to spare.

True, you will be be going forward without the vivid allure and gleaming suppleness of your lithe youthful figure. But at least when you catch a glimpse of the shadow you now cast on the ground, you will still recognize the woman you have become, and the young maiden you once were.

In the end, this is the high purpose for which you have given of yourself—the purpose of creating life. That’s a body you can be truly positive about.

Not convinced? Zounds! Then remember this: thin or round, we all rot once in the ground.