DON’T LOOK AT YOURSELF THROUGH THEIR EYES
A short story about body shaming
We live in a society that always obsessed of many thing, being “fat” means ugly, being “thin” means unhealthy. Our society is always find their way to say “this is too much” or “this is not enough”. They made an unseen standard and ironically, no one can really “fit” the standard. Most of us are potential victim of this “unseen standard”. We tend to see ourselves the way others see ourselves and as a result, we always try hard to meet the standard to get the acceptance.
I see a lot of people feel not confident with their body, including me. And even worse, when they experienced body shaming. Body shaming is defined by bodyshaming.org as being “inappropriate, negative statements and attitudes toward another person’s weight or size.” It is a form of bullying and, as well as being humiliating, it can lead to short and long term psychological and health related issues. Body shaming occurs in three main ways, criticizing yourself, criticizing someone else in front of them, and criticizing someone else behind their back. With the influx of social media use in recent years, body-shaming, or criticizing someone because of his or her appearance, has become a more common practice. People of all ages and body types are being judged because of their appearance.
Based on my little research to the men and women age 20–25 in Indonesia, they ever experienced the body shaming. Body shaming in Indonesia became something common and often make it as a joke, without they realized how it can be affected others. I’ve done a short interview and found that weight shaming became really popular among body shamers. It happened to both men and women that “too skinny” or “too fat” in the perception of social standard. And it led them to feel depressed, uncofident, and even it led to eating disorder.
Based on study of “The Role of Body Shame, Social Appearance Anxiety, and Body Checking Behavior on Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating Behaviors: A Cross-Cultural Study in Germany and Korea”, body shame proved to be a predictor of body dissatisfaction and bulimia symptoms in both female groups.I n particular, body dissatisfaction and negative affect can be influential in the perpetuation of disordered eating symptomatology.
Not only overweight women who experienced body shaming, it’s an often overlooked reality that thinner people also get shamed for being “too skinny”. One of my respondents even said that people with context of joking blame their “skinny body” because her boyfriend didn’t treat him good. Even it delivered with context of joking, it still hurts for her and led her to be really obsess to gain weight, but same as losing weight, gaining weight is not easy for some people.
Body shaming not only happens based on weight, but also skin tone, complexion and even the shape of the teeth. People joke around with others appearance. In my case, people often joke around with my poor complexion. I suffered from acne for years, went to many doctors and beauty clinics but they didn’t work. People sometimes joke around or put a pity for me. I even ever cried. One of my respondent told me that he experienced the same with his complexion. In his case, he has a dark skin tone, and many of his friends joke around with that. He felt unworthy because of this shit.
Nature has created so many body types, it’s unrealistic to expect us all to look the same. There’s no way the “perfect” body that can meet all the society expectation. Body shaming joke wasn’t funny and never will be funny. Just like we throw the stone to the sea, we never know how deep it can be fallen, words are the same. We never know how words that we have spoken can hurt others.
By writing this, I would like to tell everyone that your value is worth than your appearance. What’s inside your mind and heart is more valuable than how you look. Don’t ever thinking that you are too skinny or too fat or too ugly to be loved by others. Stop body shaming and live your life shamelessly. I always believe, when you know your value and wear it as your confidence code, you will be unstoppable to get what you want and maximize your potential. Don’t ever look at yourself through their eyes, through people judgement.
Thank you for reading! Feel free if you want to share your opinions.
PS: If you found some grammatical errors, just let me know :) Thank you.
