Body shaming is a fairly recent term, used to describe the phenomenon of shaming someone for their body shape or type. Despite the new birth of the term, body shaming practices have been going around the globe for as long as one can remember.
It is the people’s definitive notion of “beauty” that has lead to unachievable standards for skin colour, body dimensions, hair length or the kind of clothes one wears. This has lead to the society dictating you to think someone is probably too thin, too fat, too tall or too short. The repercussions of this toxic way of thinking are many, but sadly not even realised in our everyday lives.What a person doesn’t realise that body shaming not only affects the mental and physical health of the person who is being shamed but also of the person who is doing the shaming.
It is the skewed thinking of the body shamers that begin the practise in the first place, which could be the reason for a mental disorder for them. A body shamer could criticize their own appearance and have trouble accepting their own body for what it is. This may lead to a low self-esteem and self-confidence and they may have to pay the price for this by professional or personal failures. Similarly, this could affect the people they body shame as well. Body shaming has often lead to people end up getting eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia to drastically alter their weights.
It is unfortunate that, trying to fit in someone else’s standard of beautiful can have such troublesome and permanent effects.
