Perfection in Shaming You

Body shaming is when you shame another person (or yourself for that matter) for being overweight or large or just not the kind of body that you have been conditioned to view as normal/beautiful/worthy/etc. I have been grappling with this issue for awhile. How do I feel about it? Do I think this is a real thing worthy of my attention? What message am I sending to my children by calling another person fat? By calling myself fat? Short and fat of it, no less. What do I want to contribute on this subject, if anything?


I don't know. For all of it. As someone who has yo-yo-ed on the scale in the past but has recently got it under control in the last year, do I even have a place in this dialogue? As someone who has never been truly overweight or obese, can I understand what's being discussed at the table? I don't know any of that either.

I do know that the images of beauty, specifically female beauty, that we are barraged with on a daily basis are absolutely fictitious. They do not have a foothold in reality, but that is what we want to see, not just in magazines and movies, but even in our everyday lives.

There is this assumption that fat people (large people, overweight people, not-perfectly-toned-and-tightened people) are lazy. They made the choice to be fat. They decided to eat their feelings. They gave up on their bodies. They just let themselves go. They don't want "it" bad enough. Etcetera. As a culture, we openly make these rash, harsh judgments on others without even considering their intellect, compassion, or life stories. We also one-up each other and only "appreciate" our bodies through a critical lens focused on shaming others: at least my thighs don't touch all over like hers. (I'm pretty sure that shaming another person to raise yourself up in your own eyes is not true appreciation.)

I have been guilty of this.

At times, I find myself comparing my own body to the other women around me. It's a totally insecure and unnecessary thing to do, but I know I am not alone in this. If you are also a woman, I know that you have checked to see if your legs look dimpled in those leggings. You have wondered if your bra is cutting rolls into your back. You have sized another woman up in an attempt to figure out if you're smaller, thinner, skinnier, sexier than her. And for what? None of this body obsessing is healthy, at least from what I can tell and have experienced.

While I am most definitely healthier for having lost some weight last year, I can tell you for certain that I'm not always comfortable in this thinner, fitter body. I have to actively remind myself to not inspect every dimple or wrinkle or crease on my thighs/stomach/wherever. I have to remind myself to not call myself fat or tubby or other mean insults because 1) they're not true, and 2) I wouldn't want anyone else to treat themselves like that, especially if they hear me shame my own body!

I still do not feel adequate. I am still not the body I see on magazine covers, even though I know that image is not real. There have been times where I have been so self-conscious about my body, and the weight I had gained, that I didn't even want to see my family so that they wouldn't see my puffier face or rounder hips. In so many ways, I am thrilled by what my body can feel and do, but it can crumble in an instant with one look in the mirror.


I know I'm not alone in this because I hear my friends, these beautiful people, express these same insecurities regularly.

This kind of thinking is exhausting and lonely, and it's only worse for the people who we openly body shame. This body shaming that I do to myself is bad enough, so to shame another person? To someone I care about? Or worse, to a complete stranger? That is just uncalled for and enriches absolutely nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zip.

And then there is the other side of the spectrum: when someone is too skinny. We assume they're unhealthy. That they must have done something unnatural to be that way, perhaps a liquid diet or a special drug or an expensive procedure. That they couldn't have done it without some serious help. We compare ourselves to them and say acidly, "Well if I had that kind of time/money, I would look like that too!" And then that kind of sounds like an excuse and then it reminds us that we don't have perfect bodies because we are coveting someone else's and then we are ashamed of ourselves for not having that time/money/magic to be skinnier and sexier.

Or we assume these naturally thinner people just have a blessed genetic makeup...and that they don't even deserve to be skinny in the first place because of it. That they're just freaks of nature, and we shun and shame them for not "being real" even though WE WANT TO LOOK LIKE UNREAL IMAGES OF BODIES.

Ugh. Do you see what I mean? Does this sound familiar?

So, fat people are fat because of their own lazy choices...and skinny people are skinny because they had help or from factors outside of their control, like genetics? Wait, what? It's like no matter what size your body is, large or small, fat or skinny, it's just not going to be good enough, and that's pretty crappy since your body, apparently, is the only measure of your worth.

Except so totally not.

I am bringing all of this up because, well, because it bothers me that I have been part of this perpetuating, destructive cycle of body shaming. I have been self conscious about my body since I was 11 years old when I suddenly thought my thighs were too big. Even as a kid, I was already judging myself and others because of the images and beliefs that were being broadcasted on media outlets (and this was 1998: Before the Digital Age) and because the size of our legs was already a normal concern for 5th grade girls.

I don't want my children to grow up having love/hate relationships with their bodies and coveting the manufactured ones on TV and in print (if the printed press will still exist in the future). I don't want my friends to compare their bodies to others - I am tired of this being a common coffee break discussion. I don't want a stranger to think less of me because of my dress size, and I shouldn't think any less of others for the same reason.

This is all part of so many dialogues, and I'll talk about this until I'm blue in the face (ask my husband) but I really want you to ask yourself if you love your own body. And if you do, do you love it at the expense of shaming others for theirs? And if you don't, do you loathe it because you covet an imaginary standard of perfection?

These aren't pleasant questions, I know, but if we are already so critical of the way we look, we might as well be critical of the way we treat others because that's actually worth changing.