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The Female Body: An Owner's Manual: Belly Button

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Belly Button

It''s just a scar in the middle of your lower abdomen, but the belly button sure can get people stirred up. Back in the 1960s actress Barbara Eden alarmed censors when she exposed hers, wearing harem-girl pajamas on I Dream of Jeannie. A decade later, Cher drew flack for her navel-baring costumes on The Sonny and Cher Show.

Today, the belly button is out in the open. Now that some women are getting their belly buttons pierced for jewelry, it has become all the more fashionable to display this center point on your midriff.

What''s now a trendy place for a gold hoop started as the spot where you were attached as a fetus to the placenta in the uterus of your mother. "It''s the conduit through which nutrients and oxygen and waste are transmitted between mother and baby," notes John Hratko, M.D., an obstetrician/gynecologist in private practice in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Your belly button marks the site of the umbilical cord, made up of two umbilical arteries and one umbilical vein.

But how do some people end up with the sunken innie belly button as opposed to the protruding outie?

The innie is actually the norm, says Dr. Hratko. Any protrusion in that area is considered an umbilical hernia. It might have been that way from the time you were an infant, or some other cause might have turned an innie into an outie later in life--including obesity, heavy lifting or straining or pregnancy.

"Some people have outies in various degrees, from mild to moderate protrusions," he says.

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