I remember the first time I saw them—those deep purple lines spreading across my growing belly at seven months pregnant. I stood in front of the mirror, tracing them with my fingers, and felt a wave of something I wasn’t prepared for: shame.
I’d been warned about stretch marks. I’d been told they were inevitable, that they were “natural,” that they were “badges of honor.” But no one told me I would feel like my body had been permanently damaged. That I would look at these marks and see evidence of something ruined, not something created.
Six months postpartum, those marks had faded to silvery white, but the shame hadn’t faded with them. I avoided mirrors, wore one-piece swimsuits, kept the lights off during intimacy. My stretch marks had become evidence of something I’d lost, not something I’d gained.
If you’re struggling with shame about your stretch marks, you’re not alone. And the path from shame to acceptance—or even appreciation—isn’t about forcing yourself to “love” something you don’t. It’s about examining why you feel shame in the first place and choosing a different story.
Why We’re Taught to Feel Shame
Let’s be clear: stretch marks are not inherently shameful. They’re a completely normal physiological response to rapid growth. But we’re taught to view them as flaws through pervasive cultural messaging:
The beauty industry profits from your shame: The stretch mark prevention and treatment industry is worth billions. Creams, oils, laser treatments, surgical procedures—all marketed with the implicit (or explicit) message that stretch marks are problems requiring solutions.
Social media creates impossible standards: We’re bombarded with images of smooth, unmarked postpartum bodies—often edited, filtered, or belonging to the genetic minority who don’t develop visible stretch marks. This creates the false impression that marked skin is abnormal or preventable.
Pregnancy is medicalized and pathologized: Instead of viewing pregnancy as a normal bodily function, we’re taught to see it as something to “bounce back” from, to erase evidence of, to pretend didn’t permanently change us.
Women’s bodies are constantly scrutinized: The general cultural message is that women’s bodies should look a certain way—smooth, unmarked, unchanging—regardless of what those bodies have done. Aging, pregnancy, weight changes—all are treated as aesthetic failures rather than normal life experiences.
The “badge of honor” narrative is still appearance-focused: Even the well-meaning “your stretch marks are beautiful!” messaging keeps the focus on appearance. It suggests you should still care deeply about how they look, just in a different direction.
You weren’t born feeling ashamed of stretch marks. You were taught to feel that way. Which means you can unlearn it.
The Science of Stretch Marks
Understanding what stretch marks actually are can help demystify and de-shame them.
What they are: Stretch marks (striae gravidarum) are a type of scarring that occurs when skin stretches rapidly, causing the collagen and elastin fibers in the dermis (middle layer of skin) to tear. As these tears heal, they create the characteristic lines.
Who gets them: Between 50-90% of pregnant people develop stretch marks. This huge range reflects genetics, skin type, rate of growth, and other factors largely outside your control.
Why some people get them and others don’t:
- Genetics (if your mother had them, you’re more likely to)
- Skin type and collagen structure
- Rate and amount of weight gain
- Hormonal factors
- Age (younger skin is more elastic)
- Number of pregnancies
What doesn’t prevent them: Despite marketing claims, there’s limited evidence that creams, oils, or any topical treatment prevents stretch marks. If your genetics and skin structure predispose you to them, they’ll likely develop regardless of what you apply.
How they change: Fresh stretch marks are often red, purple, or dark brown (depending on your skin tone) because blood vessels are visible through the thin skin. Over time (6 months to 2 years), they typically fade to white, silver, or lighter than surrounding skin as blood vessels contract and collagen rebuilds.
The point: Stretch marks are a normal physiological process, largely determined by factors you can’t control. They’re not a reflection of inadequate self-care, insufficient prevention efforts, or bodily failure.
The Shame Spiral
Stretch mark shame doesn’t exist in isolation—it connects to broader feelings about your postpartum body and identity.
The shame often includes:
- Feeling like your body is damaged or ruined
- Believing you’re less attractive or desirable
- Avoiding intimacy or situations where your body might be visible
- Obsessively researching treatments or “solutions”
- Comparing your body to pre-pregnancy photos or other postpartum bodies
- Feeling betrayed by your body for changing
- Mourning the smooth skin you used to have
The shame is often compounded by:
- Body image struggles about your overall postpartum body
- Identity crisis about who you are now versus who you were
- Exhaustion and mental health challenges that make everything feel harder
- Cultural pressure to “get your body back”
- Comments from others about your body
- Relationship insecurity or changed intimacy with your partner
Addressing stretch mark shame often requires addressing these larger themes, not just the marks themselves.
Reframing the Narrative
Shifting from shame to acceptance (or beyond) requires actively choosing different thoughts about what your stretch marks mean.
From Flaw to Function
Old story: “My stretch marks are ugly flaws that ruined my body.”
New story: “My stretch marks are evidence that my skin stretched to accommodate my growing baby. They show my body functioned exactly as it was designed to.”
This isn’t toxic positivity or forced gratitude. It’s factual reframing. Your skin stretched because it needed to. That’s function, not flaw.
From Damage to Transformation
Old story: “My body is permanently damaged.”
New story: “My body has been permanently transformed. Transformation is different from damage.”
Damage implies something broken that should be fixed. Transformation acknowledges that change happened, and that change can be neutral or even meaningful without being “good” or “bad.”
From Aesthetic Failure to Lived Experience
Old story: “My stretch marks make me less attractive.”
New story: “My stretch marks are part of my body’s history. They tell the story of what I’ve experienced.”
Bodies aren’t meant to be static, perfect objects. They’re meant to be lived in, to reflect our experiences, to change over time. Stretch marks are evidence of life lived, not beauty lost.
From Isolation to Commonality
Old story: “Everyone else bounced back except me.”
New story: “The majority of people who’ve been pregnant have stretch marks. Mine are completely normal and shared by millions.”
You’re not an outlier. You’re part of the majority. The illusion that marked skin is unusual comes from selective visibility and photo editing, not reality.
From Permanent Problem to Changing Reality
Old story: “These will never go away and I’ll hate my body forever.”
New story: “These marks will fade and change. My feelings about them will also likely change as I adjust to my postpartum body and identity.”
Both the physical appearance and your emotional relationship to stretch marks will evolve. How you feel now isn’t permanent.
Practical Strategies for Reducing Shame
1. Limit Exposure to Harmful Content
Curate your media consumption intentionally:
- Unfollow accounts that promote unrealistic postpartum body standards
- Follow diverse postpartum bodies that show marks, softness, and real changes
- Limit exposure to cosmetic surgery and “body transformation” content
- Be selective about pregnancy and postpartum content that focuses primarily on appearance
What you see regularly shapes what you believe is normal. Choose to see reality.
2. Challenge Automatic Thoughts
When shame arises, interrupt the thought pattern:
- Notice the thought: “I’m thinking my stretch marks are ugly”
- Question it: “Is that true? Who defined ugly? What purpose does this thought serve?”
- Replace it: “These marks are neutral. My value isn’t determined by unmarked skin”
You don’t have to believe the replacement thought fully—just create space between the automatic shame and your response to it.
3. Practice Body Neutrality
You don’t have to love your stretch marks. Body neutrality is often more achievable and sustainable than body love:
- “My belly has stretch marks. That’s a neutral fact.”
- “My stretch marks don’t determine my worth or capability.”
- “I can appreciate what my body did without loving every physical result.”
Neutrality removes the pressure to perform either shame or gratitude.
4. Diversify How You Define Beauty
If “beauty” only includes unmarked skin, expand your definition:
- What makes a tree beautiful? Its perfect symmetry or its character and history?
- What makes a face beautiful? Smooth skin or the laugh lines that show a life well-lived?
- What makes a body beautiful? Conformity to standards or the evidence of what it’s experienced?
Beauty can include marks, changes, and stories. It doesn’t have to mean smooth and unchanged.
5. Connect With Your Body’s Function
Shift focus from appearance to capability:
- Your body carried and grew a human
- Your abdomen stretched to accommodate life
- Your skin adapted to enormous changes
- Your body continues to function, heal, and serve you
What your body can do is infinitely more important than how it looks doing it.
6. Address Comments From Others
If someone comments on your stretch marks (or postpartum body generally), you can:
- Set a boundary: “I don’t discuss my body with others.”
- Redirect: “I’m focusing on how I feel, not how I look.”
- Challenge: “Why do you think that’s an appropriate comment?”
- Disengage: “I’m not interested in this conversation.”
You don’t owe anyone access to your body or explanations about it. For more on setting boundaries with family, especially if they’re the ones commenting.
7. Reclaim Intimacy
If stretch marks are affecting intimacy with your partner:
Talk about it: “I feel self-conscious about my stretch marks during intimacy. I need reassurance/patience/to keep the lights low for now.”
Check assumptions: Ask your partner directly if they’re bothered by your stretch marks. Often you’ll find they barely notice or don’t care. If they do express negative feelings, that’s a relationship issue requiring deeper conversation or couples work.
Focus on sensation over appearance: During intimacy, redirect your attention to how things feel rather than how you imagine you look.
Give yourself time: It’s normal to need time to feel comfortable in your changed body. Don’t rush or force yourself.
8. Explore Treatment (or Don’t)
You’re allowed to pursue treatment for stretch marks if you choose. Options include:
- Topical retinoids (prescription)
- Laser therapy
- Microneedling
- Chemical peels
Things to consider:
- These treatments can be expensive and require multiple sessions
- Results vary significantly and are rarely dramatic
- They work better on newer, darker marks than older, faded ones
- Some aren’t compatible with breastfeeding
- Pursuing treatment doesn’t mean you’ve “given in” to shame if it helps you feel more comfortable
However, if you’re pursuing treatment primarily from shame or external pressure rather than genuine personal preference, it’s worth examining those motivations first.
It’s also okay to choose to do nothing. Your stretch marks will fade naturally over time. You don’t have to treat or “fix” them.
What Partners Need to Understand
If your partner is struggling with stretch mark shame:
What helps:
- Specific, genuine compliments about their body that don’t focus only on unchanged areas
- Reassurance that you’re attracted to them, marks and all
- Patience with their discomfort without pressure to “get over it”
- Not making jokes or comments about stretch marks, even “playful” ones
- Supporting them in defining health beyond appearance
What doesn’t help:
- “I don’t even notice them” (invalidates their experience)
- “You should love your body” (creates pressure)
- “They’re not that bad” (implies they’re bad, just less so)
- Comparing them to others who “bounced back”
- Expressing disappointment or disgust (this is relationship-ending behavior)
If your feelings about your partner’s stretch marks are negative, that’s your issue to work through (ideally with a therapist), not theirs to fix.
The Cultural Conversation We Need
Individual body acceptance is important, but we also need cultural change:
Stop editing stretch marks out of photos: Representing real postpartum bodies in media, advertising, and social media normalizes marked skin.
Challenge the prevention industry: Question marketing that profits from making normal bodily changes seem preventable or fixable.
Expand beauty standards: Include marked, changed, diverse bodies in definitions of beautiful.
Celebrate function over form: Value what bodies can do rather than only how they look.
Support each other: When someone shares vulnerability about their postpartum body, respond with validation rather than fixes or toxic positivity.
You can’t change culture alone, but every time you challenge shame—in yourself or conversations with others—you contribute to broader change.
When Shame Runs Deeper
Sometimes, stretch mark shame is connected to deeper body image issues, trauma, or mental health concerns:
Signs you might need professional support:
- Stretch mark shame is significantly interfering with your daily life
- You’re avoiding necessary activities (doctor appointments, intimacy, social events)
- The shame is accompanied by significant anxiety, depression, or rage
- You have a history of eating disorders or body dysmorphia
- The shame triggers past trauma
A therapist who specializes in body image, postpartum issues, or eating disorders can help you work through these deeper issues.
The Timeline (Or Lack Thereof)
There’s no timeline for “getting over” stretch mark shame. For some people, acceptance comes quickly. For others, it takes months or years. Some people never fully love their marks but learn to coexist peacefully with them.
What often helps over time:
- Distance from the immediate postpartum period
- Seeing stretch marks fade and change
- Finding community with others who have similar bodies
- Shifting focus to other aspects of postpartum adjustment
- Developing a more complex, multifaceted identity beyond “how I look”
Be patient with yourself. You’re not required to immediately love or accept something you’ve been taught to see as a flaw.
What You Can Control
You can’t control:
- Whether you get stretch marks
- How extensive they are
- How quickly or fully they fade
- Other people’s comments or judgments
You can control:
- How you talk to yourself about them
- Whether you expose yourself to harmful media
- Who you allow to comment on your body
- Whether you pursue treatment
- How much mental energy you give them
- What you teach your children about bodies
Focus your energy on what you can influence rather than what you can’t.
A Different Kind of Evidence
Your stretch marks are evidence. Not evidence of failure, damage, or letting yourself go—evidence of what your body accomplished.
They’re evidence that:
- Your skin stretched to make room for life
- Your body adapted to extraordinary changes
- You experienced something that transformed you
- You survived pregnancy and birth
- You’re on the other side of something difficult
That evidence doesn’t have to be beautiful or loved. It can just be true.
And maybe, eventually, when you look at those marks, you won’t see flaws. You’ll see a map of where you’ve been. Not because someone told you to reframe it that way, but because you genuinely see yourself—and your body—differently than you did before.
That shift from shame to acceptance isn’t about forcing yourself to love stretch marks. It’s about recognizing that the story you’ve been told about what they mean is just one story. And you get to choose a different one.
Moving Forward
If you’re struggling with stretch mark shame today:
- Acknowledge the feeling without judgment: “I feel shame about my stretch marks. That’s understandable given cultural messaging.”
- Challenge one thought: Pick one automatic negative thought and question it. You don’t have to believe something positive, just create doubt about the negative.
- Do one thing differently: Wear something you’ve been avoiding. Look at your body in the mirror neutrally. Touch your stretch marks without judgment. Small actions create change.
- Connect with others: Find one community, account, or person who represents real postpartum bodies. Authentic connection reduces isolation.
- Give yourself permission: You don’t have to love your stretch marks today, tomorrow, or ever. You just have to stop letting shame about them prevent you from living fully.
Your body has changed. That’s not tragedy—it’s transformation. And you get to decide what that transformation means.
Need Support Processing Body Image After Birth?
If you’re struggling with body image, identity changes, or accepting your postpartum body—including stretch marks—I’m here to help. Together we can explore these feelings in a shame-free space and develop a healthier relationship with your transformed body.
Book a session with me to work through body image challenges and build genuine self-acceptance during this vulnerable time.
Struggling with your postpartum wardrobe too? Read: The Clothes That Fit You Now: Embracing Your Post-Baby Wardrobe for Confidence
Want to reframe your entire approach to postpartum health? Check out: Beyond the Scale: Defining Your Health Goals Postpartum
