Body Shaming

Writer: Salma El Adly

We are willing to listen to our minds more than to trust our bodies. The human body is a complex structure, a maze with organs and rivers of bloodstreams. You might wake up one day, look into the mirror and out of nowhere ask yourself a million questions: Why do I look that? Why am I so fat? Why am I so slim?

Every single human being on earth goes into a stage of blaming themselves for how they look. We all have insecurities, we all doubt our beauty. It’s not only our beauty that we question, but the beauty of others as well.

We allow ourselves to criticize our own bodies and others too. We might see our bodies as the most important thing that attracts everyone to us. Our bodies aren’t projectors to the society, we can’t allow magazines, models, or whatever sources to make us hide our ‘flaws’ or ‘imperfections; nevertheless, that’s what we do; we compare ourselves with supposedly more ‘appealing’ humans.

Body-shaming : criticizing yourself or others because of some aspect of physical appearance- can lead to a vicious cycle of judgments and criticism. If you judge yourself all the time, then you’re just allowing others in the society to judge you as well. If this happens, the cycle of criticism and body-shaming will never end.

According to a survey, 93 per cent of women and 83 per cent of men have reported being body shamed. There were 35 per cent of women and 17 per cent of men who reported being told they were too big, too small, too short, too tall, etc.

If we look closer into the issue, body shaming causes health issues: mentally and physically. A person who is body shamed will force them self to change their ‘imperfections’, this might lead to them doing it in the wrong way. A person who thinks he/she is overweight will starve himself/herself and force himself/herself to throw up, and this, in turn, causes bulimia. As for mentally, the same person will keep over-thinking and blaming himself/herself for something that counts as a beautiful part of his/her being.

You can’t blame yourself and let others criticize you because you were born with specific features. What if all those ‘imperfections’ are what make you unique? What if they are what make you so damn beautiful amongst others?

As a conclusion, my friends, don’t let yourself fall in to the trap of body shaming. Don’t ever, EVER, let someone body shame you. You are beautiful no matter how much you weigh, how tall or short you are, or what your skin tone is. You’re beautiful in every aspect.