The Importance Of Body Shaming In My Life

A few years ago, when I played field hockey, most of my family members complimented on my weight and said I have changed a lot in years. After, one day when my family from Pakistan skyped us and said they wanted to meet me and my siblings, one of them commented on my weight and said I have gone “fat” than I was a few years ago. I felt really insecure about my body and quit field hockey as a result. I started to skip lunch in school and go down in the art room and not surround myself with people. I started to eat less and start to be more depressive. Victims of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia are ignored and disgusted by society because they do not fit the “perfect model image” of what society has grown among women especially. In my culture, I have seen many older women talk about how they must dress to “impress” their husband or how they compete against other women and compare each other. As a young woman, I have been constantly being told to lose weight so I can get married at an early age or go to the gym when you have free time. Media has imposed thinness through the female and male models advertising, though fast food restaurants who have included “healthier” choices, etc. Although our background and culture play a strong role in our eating habits, other factors like family, environment, low self-esteem, and difficult experiences can cause someone to become anorexic or bulimic. In today's society, many people are affected by eating disorders, are impacted by the images of slim women and muscular men appearing on front covers of fashion magazines. These eating disorders are most common among young teen as they starve or binge themselves trying to attain what the fashion industry considers being the “ideal” figure of a perfect woman or man. For example, in the Meghan Trainor’s song “All About That Bass”, where she sends a message which can be harmful to females

I am watching our society change how people view their bodies. When I was younger, I do not remember body image even being a topic that was regularly discussed. Not to say that people weren’t going through this previously, but it is that it just wasn’t something that was talked about every day. But now, as I get older, I’m starting to see these topics in the news more often and they are starting to affect people around me; like my family, friends, coworkers, etc...

Society wants thicker women to feel sorry about themselves and want other skinnier individuals to judge them. I’ve experienced being bullied by peers and family members from my weight gain when I was younger. I was a bit bigger than some kids at the age I was gaining the weight, but I dealt with being called “fat”, “big girl”, “hippo”, etc. It hurt me, but it made me stronger and built my self-esteem because I don’t need people in my life to make me feel less of myself and it also made me feel confident because if they’re paying so much attention to me, they obviously wanted something I had, that they couldn’t

Societal pressure also comes in the form of body shaming, which is defined as the criticism of another person’s body shape or appearance. According to a 2016 study, there is correlation between body shaming, body dissatisfaction, and eating disorders, all of which happen to be most prevalent in young women (Mustapic p. 447). In recent years, body shaming has become a huge problem due to the popularity of social media platforms. Women of all shapes and sizes are ridiculed on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and other sites for not conforming to societal normalities. The 2016 study also assessed eating disorders in relation to age and body mass index (BMI) of participants (Mustapic p. 449). Age did not have much effect on the data, which is unsurprising due to the fact that all participants were close in age. What is more surprising, however, is that BMI also had little effect on the data. One would think that women with greater BMIs would

Low self-esteem is, and always will be, a growing issue in the world. There will always be people who struggle with it more than others and others less. And some people want to change it, some people want to help other people so that they never have to face the harsh reality of low self-esteem. And some people just don’t want any help at all. But of course, without a change, body image will just get worse. And if there is change, perhaps this way that social media and people view reality can change how everything is going

Body shaming is even more difficult to people that feel insecure about their body every day. “In a society that puts so much emphasis on body image and beauty, it is so easy to get caught up in self -condemnation and body shaming” (Aceves). Society concentrates more on how the person looks physically. Instead of, accepting them on how they are and concentrating on other things. For that reason, people who feel offended thru others want to be accepted by them. They start to stop eating, they become bulimic, anorexic or fall into depression. Just because they want to look at how society wants them to look.

Though body image is not something I have issues with, but I have friends who can’t see their own worth because they believe that beauty is something defined by the front of a magazine. I watch them look in the mirror and pinch at their body, wishing they were thinner because then maybe they would “beautiful.” They think they are ugly, fat, stupid, a spaz, or any other classic school ground insult, and despite having many friends who tell them otherwise, they believe those lies. They are so caught up in their negative comments they tell themselves, that they do not realize they are drowning. Everything is so muddled up in their head, they can not see the light because they are surrounded by their own walls, built up so high, not even the sun shines through. Our society has a saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” but that is so far from the truth. Sure, stones leave visible scars, but they can be treated, healed; words on the other hand, the mark they leave is so much more detrimental. For wounds left by words can not be fixed or treated, they just stay there, forever a scar. So the next time you’re going to

It finally took some counseling and a realization that body-shaming happens to ALL body types. But why are we doing it? Does it make us feel better about our own body types to tell other women that they need to lose or gain weight? Is it really that important that we must insert our own (albeit invalid) opinion into other individuals lives? I am lucky. I have a very grounded home life and a great relationship with my parents in which I was able to move past these comments. Now, whenever I receive any sort of body-shaming remark, I smile and put it behind me. Others are not as lucky. One nasty or even well-meaning comment might send someone into a downward spiral of

The final topic that I will be discussing within today's blog is how body shaming and bullying may lead to unhealthy forms of meeting society's unrealistic expectations. Normally, these "unhealthy forms" may include increased or decreased eating, minimal or increased exercise, and in serious cases, these forms can lead to eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. According to body nutrition.org, "An observational study with more than 6000 participants showed that obese subjects who experienced exposure to weight discrimination were two and a half times more likely to hang onto that weight over the following years than those who did not

As a young child, my parents unintentionally negatively impacted my self-esteem in a variety of different ways. Due to my undiagnosed learning disability, I often misinterpreted or failed to understand rules and instructions without my parents realizing it. I would frequently get in trouble because I broke a rule or failed to do what my parents wanted me to without even knowing it. My parents thought that I was just being difficult so they would yell at me or punish me and because I had no idea what I had done wrong, I felt like I was a bad kid because I was always getting in trouble. I would also misinterpret what my parents were trying to say a lot of the time, which was also often damaging to my self-esteem. For example, when I scored my first goal playing hockey I was so excited and proud of myself and thought my parents would be too, since they would always tell our family if one of my siblings scored. However, my dad told me that “he did not care if I scored a goal” and I interpreted it to mean that he did not care about me or that I scored and only cared if my siblings did, but what he meant was that he was proud of me whether I scored or not as long as I was doing my best. My parents also damaged my self-esteem by belittling me or shaming me when they got frustrated because I was not doing what they wanted. For example, my parents would say things like, “why can’t you be more like your sister, she can put her seat belt on, why can’t you?”. This led me to feel like there was something wrong with me and that I wasn’t good enough. It also caused me to start comparing myself to my siblings, which made me feel inadequate because it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I could never measure up to what they could do. However, once my parents discovered that I had a learning disability that caused me to misinterpret nonverbal, social and complicated verbal cues, they did their best to

It’s a subject that in the recent years have been a subject for much controversy. Whether you go into the subject of skinny shaming, fat shaming, or simply appearance in general. We all feel the weight of society norms and media nudging our decisions.

Media plays a large role in influencing body shame through the advertisements they put out and who is casted for the lead roles. From weight-loss commercials promoting the newest supplement to help lose those first thirty pounds to movies filled with beautiful, skinny, white actresses- diversity in body type is not a narrative promoted by the

The conversations regarding the issue of body shaming models because they are thinner than the average girl or guy, or even larger, and is causing a comparable amount of controversy to racial discrimination. This, is not okay. The main issue that comes up the most is, body shaming models and banning their images from being produced is rather, building more of a conflict between the two sides more than helping create peace I am on the side of letting people do whatever they want with their body and let them be proud of if they so desire. I do not see a reason to bring someone down just because you think they are making a bad decision, if they are happy with their body then just let them be. The reasons why I believe the author’s main claim is

Body-Shaming is known as criticizing or humiliating someone by making impolite comments on an individual's body shape or size. Body-shaming is a subject that has been recently brought to light with the use of social media; many celebrities have talked about body-shaming along with quite a few other individuals who have even went out to do social experiments. Generations and generations have passed and as the years go by, the problems only seems to get worse. Comments like “you should put more meat on your bones” and “you should go on a diet” are both equally demeaning and overused. It shouldn’t matter what someone’s body size or shape is to anyone as long as that person is happy and content with himself or herself. Almost everyone has

In today’s society we let the media decide everything in our lives from what clothes we should wear, music we should listen to, and how we should look. One of the biggest problems that both men and women face is body shaming, because the media sets standards for young kids and young adults., they often times try and fit the description of “perfect” which leads these people to either be depressed because they do not look like people want them to look or harm themselves in order to achieve the desired look. The most common ways the media shames both men and women are by celebrities and how they are the “perfect” body, publishing magazines of what is the ideal man and woman, and by the people who believe being “too” fat is bad and being “too” skinny is bad.