Body Bashing: 5 Ways to Fix It
Published on January 30, 2012 by GirlieGirlArmy · 13 CommentsLast week we published an article titled, “The Problem with Skinny Bashing.” Born from my own frustration with how women were insulting other women’s bodies on social media, the article explored how hurtful it can be when people proclaim their body type to be superior to another’s. The most recent facebook phenomenon of posting images like this one, the subject of my last article, shows that skinny-bashing has become acceptable, and even encouraged, as a way to fight against the worship of the size two bodies we see in movies, magazines and on TV. But no one should be body-bashed. And insulting one another certainly isn’t going stop the cycle of verbal abuse that has damaged our confidence and our love of our bodies.
The article went viral. With over 4,000 likes on facebook, over 300 comments on the post, reddit threads and blog responses, women and men came out to share their stories and frustration with a society that shames women (and men too), no matter what they look like.
It was inspiring. Most women who chimed in shared their desire for creating a kinder world. One where we value health and confidence over fitting into the narrow category of beauty that fashion magazines and Hollywood promote each day. This longing to change the way we think about others and ourselves is something we can and should put into action. With the force of women who want a more supportive and safer world to live in, I really believe it can be done.
The question becomes: in a society where people are insulting one another to make themselves feel better at the expense of others, how are we supposed to be comfortable with our natural shapes? Based on the comments and my personal experience, insults are flung from friends, family and even total strangers about everything from cup size to waist size. Some didn’t even realize they were being hurtful, but after further discussion, saw that it’s inappropriate and even cruel to make comments about the shape of another person’s body.
Even after reading the article, some chose still to bash.
One man posted on facebook in response: “+ 1 on the fuller body. I don’t know any man who would prefer the skinny body presented by the woman on the far left.”
My response to him: “It’s not about your preference. It’s about women not worrying so much about what men want or what the media says we should look like, and instead striving for a healthy body. Whatever shape that may be. By the way, I’m skinny and my husband likes me just fine.”
I purposefully left my size out of “The Problem with Skinny Bashing.” I didn’t want my own body to become the focus (and isn’t that the point?). But, inspired by so many women who came forward to share their own stories, I can say: I’m 30 years old, 5’9” and a size two. I’ve always been a size two. Like many of the thin women who commented, I was made fun of for being flat-chested and skinny during puberty. Other young women made fun of me in the locker room for my gangly limbs and training bra. It wasn’t until college that I became remotely comfortable with myself.
Ali Berman
If living in my skin sounds like something to be envied, be warned. If you want to trade your body for mine, you have to take with it the scars from cancer and a permanent disability. No body is perfect. We all struggle. We all have insecurities, and we all hurt when others bash us.
With all women, no matter what the size, facing emotional issues with their bodies (insecurity, insults, fear, health problems), how can we pool our resources to change something that has so skillfully invaded–and created–our feelings about others and ourselves?
Here are some thoughts that I had. I’d love to hear yours, too. After all, if we’re going to build a better way of talking about our bodies, it needs to be a conversation everyone is a part of.
1. I’m a big fan of personal responsibility. If you find yourself looking at another woman’s body and tearing it down in your mind for being too fat, thin, busty, flat-chested, short, tall, wearing last season’s clothes: stop. Retrain yourself to look beyond the physical. I too am guilty of doing this. I’m trying to retrain my brain to be more positive and less critical, both of myself and others. As I’ve grown older, it has gotten easier, but like any change in behavior, it takes work. Knowing the effect one person can have on the world (positive or negative), I’m doing the work, and it’s making me into a happier person.
2. If you hear others tearing someone down, don’t join in, and don’t be silent. Bullies aren’t just in junior high. Adults can be bullies, and bullies need someone to stand up to them, even if it’s gently pointing out to a friend that no one deserves to have his or her body be insulted, criticized, or critiqued.
3. Let go of the way magazines and movies tell you that you should look, and let go of the way they tell you other people should look. Make health and comfort in your own skin your ultimate goal. When we appreciate ourselves and let go of the jealously we feel towards others, we are able to truly be at peace with our bodies.
4. Each person has their own vision of beauty and their own goals for how they want to look. We need to stop expecting other people to agree with our own unique vision and find joy in the fact that our society is built out of all different kinds of people. The “I’m okay, you’re okay” philosophy. It’s not easy, but it can be done.
5. If someone body-bashes you, don’t politely smile and wish you could disappear. (That’s what I used to do.) Instead tell them that their comments make you uncomfortable and you don’t wish to discuss your body with them. If they protest or say that they were complimenting you (so many backhanded compliments!), forward them the article “The Problem with Skinny Bashing.”
Do you have any other suggestions? If so, we’d love to hear them in the comments. And, on twitter, use the hashtag #bodybashing to keep the conversation going. I’m inspired by your stories, and I know others are too.
Ali Berman is a writer/teacher/activist. She works as a humane educator for HEART teaching kids about issues affecting people, animals and the environment. She is also the senior editor for Ecorazzi.com and a fiction writer.
Tags: ali berman, body bashing, Fat, fat phobia, fat positive, fear of fat, fear of skinny, Feminism, Heart, skinny, skinny positive
Readers Comments (13)
[...] We are blown away by all your insightful comments, and the follow up piece is now live here: Body Bashing: 5 Ways to Fix It, kindly go read it and chime in. If you agree that we can treat both others and ourselves better [...]
People lack the language to deal with this, and this is why feminism should be taught in school. This is called the “male gaze,” and although women and gay men do it, it reflects the impossible standards of heterosexual desirability: its about sex. I know because as a “skinny girl,” I get it from ghetto dudes and construction workers (choicest picks for women, I know) sizing me up, loudly talking about whether or not they’d have sex with me, and even a “good morning” is met with scorn. Its a class issue and it shows that people dont know how to be neighborly unless they want to have sex, its pathetic and the commenter you mentioned is a perfectly gross example. Thanks for calling out the bs!
I am sure men who have are not “ghetto” as you put it are just as able to say sexist demeaning things to women. Let’s not throw in classism and over generalization into this topic please.
Great post!
here’s another way to help change media & corporate bias. billabong won’t feature one of their top sponsored athletes because she’s a healthy size 8 instead of a size 3 in their ‘modeling’ clothes. please sign this petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/sign-to-support-healthy-female-role-models#
[...] Body Bashing: 5 Ways to Fix It | GirlieGirl Army. [...]
Great article! I’m a photographer who primarily does model portfolios and conceptual shoots, and I hear the body-bashing from both sides. I have girlfriends who make snide comments about how skinny some of the models are and I hear from models who are already a very trim and healthy weight that the local agency wants them to lose 10-15 pounds. It makes me sad that we teach women to hate their bodies and that it gets reinforced so frequently.
I had a friend ask me recently “how come you’re only taking photos of skinny girls?” I said “I’ll take photos of anyone who wants to model for me. It just so happens that the majority of girls who want to model are more petite.” A lot of that is the industry, but a lot of that is the way larger women under-value themselves. A larger woman who knows how to move her body can look way better in front of the camera than a slender woman who doesn’t know how to model.
On a personal note, my wife is a a busty curvy woman who’s always struggled with her weight and self-image. She’s recently gotten into roller derby and has been steadily losing weight by simply finding an exercise she enjoys and counting calories. When we talk about why she didn’t do this sooner she is just amazed and says “you know, no one ever told me how to do it right before”. There are so many crazy diets and confusing health information out there. So much money to be made, and it’s so cheap to be unhealthy that it breeds misinformation. The idea that you have to contort your body into doing unnatural things (don’t eat bread/rice/red meat, etc) in order to lose weight. It creates this mirage that losing weight involves huge sacrifices or a great deal of suffering rather then a lifestyle shift that isn’t beyond anyone’s grasp. She still has a long way to go to meet her goal, but she’s slowly and steadily reaching it.
There’s just so much JUDGEMENT about women’s bodies and it really needs to stop. Size is not beauty. People are.
I’m the skinny bitch. I have been skinnybashed my whole life. I am naturally skinny, I don’t diet and neither want to gain nor loose weight. I have been skinny bashed by overweight guys, average weight women, you name it. I have never called an overweight person fat and don’t think everyone should be as skinny as me. It really hurts me every time I hear it and I doubt that it makes the other person feel so much better after telling me. This definitely needs to stop. After reading this article, I stopped smiling at the bashing comments and calmly asked the other person how the would feel if I commented their body or how they would feel if I suggested them to eat less after they just told me I need to eat more. It still baffles me how bad that goes down while I am supposed to just swallow the comments dished out to me.
You didn’t have to tell your readers about your body because everyone could have guessed because it was spoken like a true skinny person. Nearly everyone is picked on, people will big noses, or glasses, or gapped teeth, or really anything when they are in school. As someone who used to be overweight, I find it outrageously insulting that you compare yourselves to larger women in terms of being insulted. I am now someone who is a healthy weight and I absolutely agree that that picture (and others like it) is not the way to embrace fuller figures. However, as someone who has always been thin, it is incredible insensitive and rude for you to imply that your struggles with body image are the same as an overweight person. Your body type, while maybe not “idealized” by the media, was certainly not a constant source of belittlement into your adult life. You did not have to shop in special stores, or buy two plane tickets or never see anyone like you in movies/tv/magazines, or have to deal with being considered the opposite of “attractiveness” by the media. While I do agree with your message that this is not the RIGHT way to embrace different body types, I think that for you to make these comparisons is truly insensitive, ill-informed and spoken like a true “skinny person”.
Bisous, that is exactly the attitude that Ms. Berman is talking about. If you’ve never been super thin, then you can’t possibly know that “[her] body type…was certainly not a constant source of belittlement into your adult life.”
I’ve also always been quite thin. As a little kid it wasn’t something that I got picked on for, but as an adult, surprisingly (you’d think that adults would be better at concealing their contempt for somebody over something so trivial as her dress size), I get comments from people all the time that, while they’re purportedly “backhanded compliments,” really hurt my feelings. Some recent examples:
-as I walked from the bathroom to my room recently in my towel after a shower, my roommate said, “Good God, those shoulders! Please eat something.” Um, ouch. I really can’t help my shoulders. Sorry they bother you so much?
-last weekend, at the corner bodega in my neighborhood, a girl waiting in line commented after I ordered fried chicken, “Wait, is that really for you??? I bet it’s really for your boyfriend. Or you’re just going to throw it up later.” What? Uhm, thanks stranger girl, for assuming I’m bulimic. So funny–NOT!
-the barista at the corner coffee shop: “Girl, if I ate as many croissants as you do, I would weigh 7,000 pounds. You bitch. Hahaha!” Hahaha…? No, wait, I don’t get it. I’m a bitch now?
-on the beach with a group of friends this past summer, one of said friends exclaimed, “Oh my GOD, will you please cover your frighteningly flat stomach? It makes me angry.” Why? Why are you angry about my stomach, “friend”? How does it affect you *at all*?
The comments come more or less constantly, from friends, casual acquaintances, and strangers alike. Seriously.
What I’m saying is that you really can’t know what another person goes through until you’ve actually been in her shoes. I would not pretend to be “certain,” as you put it, Ms. Bisous, that the kinds of insults–verbal, tacit, or systemic/societal–that a curvier woman might endure, because, no, I’ve never been that woman. But I don’t disparage curvy, heavy, or overweight women, because, you know, it’s none of my damn business to do so and what right do I have to try to make them feel a certain way about their bodies? None. I wish others would do me, and other skinny women, the same courtesy.
While it’s correct to say that, most probably, the societal insults (the way a thin figure is depicted in the media, for instance [that is, generally quite positively], or the way clothes are stocked in stores and what sizes are available where) flung at us are likely not so great as those directed at heavier women, we do get verbal, personal, individual insults from others more frequently than one might imagine.
The bottom line is that it’s just never appropriate to make a negative assumption about what a person is like based simply on her physique. Allegations that I’m a “bitch” just because I happen to have a fast metabolism are, obviously, absurd and completely baseless. Statements like, “Your stomach is bothering me because it’s so flat, ugh!” are hurtful. Can we all just worry about ourselves and not judge other people for how they appear–including making such judgmental statements as, “your body type…was certainly not a constant source of belittlement into your adult life.”
Bisous thank you for writing your comment….
Fat phobia is a society issue skinny putdowns is a interpersonal issue. So even though I’m sure the intentions were good due to the way our society currently runs they are not as comparable as this article makes it seem.
Bisous, you’re obviously a bitch with body issues. Look at yourself, see your beauty, and try to work on that attitude.
Great post! I am a little fat. Always somebody body-bases me, usually I keep simlie .Now I should listen to my heart and told them their comments make me uncomfortable.