Body Shaming- Why we do it?

Body shaming (criticizing yourself or others because of some aspect of physical appearance is one the most humiliating acts adopted by the society. It’s astonishing and disturbing that people don’t even take it seriously and no one talks about it. Magazines and most of the television commercials promote and encourage the idea and objective of typical techniques for losing weight “in days” and hide all the “imperfections”. Television dramas and sitcoms use overweight bodies as the foundation of many of the show’s jokes.

It has become ordinary that people are judged by their bodies, if you’re slim and slender (regardless of the fact that you might be a terrible person from the inside), you’ll get tons of friends without any effort and try. And if you’re a little chubby or overweighed, people would run away from you even if you have a good heart or are an amazing person from the inside. Mostly the people who have the same body type are appeared to be friends. Messages from each other and from media often imply that we should change how we look and we should care about looking slimmer. And if we don’t, we fret that we are at risk of being attacked by someone else’s body shaming comments.

Body-shaming patents in many ways:

• Criticizing your own appearance, by comparing it to another person. (i.e.: “I’m so ugly compared to her/him”)
• Criticizing someone else’s appearance in front of them. (i.e.: “With that body, you’re never going to find a man/girl”)
• Criticizing someone else’s appearance without them knowing. (i.e.: “Did you see what she’s/he’s wearing today?” OR “At least you don’t look like her/him”)

Cause Of Depression

Body shaming can even lead to mental health issues like; depression, anxiety and social isolation. Also, people can get anxious to the level that they might suffer panic attacks.

Now the question that arrives is: If body shaming has such harsh consequences, why is it still so common? Why, when we are upset, annoyed or intimidated by someone, we always criticize their appearance; “Whatever, she’s ugly”. Because, in some ways it feels easier to hit for something that will hurt, rather than talking and expressing about what is really going on emotionally. Saying, “I’m really hurt by how you treated me”, or “I’m terrified to lose this friendship” would do the work and wouldn’t hurt anyone, moreover it will solve the problem.

We all must should understand that body shaming is not fair. No one wants to be body shamed, it leads to several serious and rasping consequences. Many people are fat because of some disease, medicines or even stress. Many people do not get married because they are chubby.

And here’s a message to all those who get body-shamed; learn to love yourself, find things YOU like about yourself. We spend a lot of time in observing what we should do to make our eyelashes perfectly long and our skin flawlessly glowing; it’d be great to counter some of that by celebrating and appreciating what we do have.

Body shaming culture needs to stop. We all should learn some ethics and think about our imperfections and flaws before we pass any body-shaming comments. We should be there for people in need rather than criticizing their appearance and judging them on the basis of their looks because no one is perfect and we need to spread love and not hate as that is a lot in this world.