Tummy Ache is a new magazine that explores the dangers of building up a ‘perfect’ version of the self to present to the world, and hiding from the imperfection and uncertainties of life. This, the magazine says, is in turn dissolving our capacity to feel gratitude, creativity and empathy.
About the third issue of Tummy Ache ('The Lazy Issue') from the publisher:
Long framed as a moral failing, laziness is a label wielded against the sick, the working class, the racialised, and the marginalised. Under capitalism, to be called lazy is to be cast out — unworthy, unproductive, undesirable. This issue asks: what does it mean to embrace laziness, not as failure, but as refusal?
Featuring work from artists and writers, such as Sophie K. Rosa, Tolu Agbelusi and Catherine Cohen, this issue interrogates the fear and fetishisation of doing nothing. The Lazy Issue unpicks the ways laziness has been pathologised — from classism and racism to ableism — and explores what happens when we step outside the logic of productivity entirely.
Vol. 3 is both a provocation and a space for rest — a reminder that exhaustion is not a personal flaw, but a structural consequence. In a world where our worth is tied to our output, laziness might just be a radical act.
