Stop commenting on other people’s bodies. A person being born and beginning to exist does not give everyone else a direct license to assess that person’s body through snide remarks every single time they see them for the rest of their lives.
Many of us have been forced to endure a family member telling us that we are getting “chubby”, or recommending that we perhaps do not eat that second helping of food for lunch. So often have we witnessed an aunt tell us that the young woman she works with doesn’t suit the clothes she wears – her thighs are just too big – or had to scroll through hundreds of comments dissecting a woman for having the audacity to live within her body with nothing but pure joy.
Within this modern Western society entirely infatuated with smallness and youth, particularly when it comes to women, people do not seem to be able to comprehend that a person can be comfortable in their own skin without morphing into the ideals that others have created for them – the standards of which are more fitting to dusty miniature porcelain dolls left on a shelf than living breathing human beings. Incidentally, this is exactly where comments relating to said unrealistic standards should be kept – dusty and forgotten, on a shelf. The health of a person is never up for debate or speculation, it is the business of said person and their doctor alone, so why is it that many feel as if they have the right to tell others whether or not they should currently be feeling shame about the shape of the thing that protects their organs and brains and keeps them alive – their body?
There must be a solution to moving away from this, and it starts with removing the topic of other people’s bodies from our vocabulary, unless they bring it up first. There is no reason for any adult to be commenting on the body shape of a toddler, or telling a teenage boy that he is too skinny, or telling an employee that they are going to be undesirable if they keep eating so much pasta. Body shaming is not normal conversation, it is cruel, and harmful, and is something that crosses a very important boundary that some may not even realise they are allowed to put up for themselves. This particular strain of shame has become so embedded in our daily lives, we have come to expect it, we have come to accept it – at the expense of our own safety and mental health.
There is so much that our bodies do for us every day – but above all, our gorgeous, varied, silly bodies keep us conscious and alive, and able to experience this life we have. With all that our bodies do, why are we so concerned when another person lives within their own existence so unashamedly? Is the ultimate goal not to love one’s own body and dress as one wishes and live exactly as one wishes to live? When society normalises consistent body shaming and commenting on others’ legs and arms and necks and stomachs, then we normalise the great risk of eating disorders, and of self-destructive behaviour that may result from trying to fit into these made up notions of what a human should look like. We normalise the idea that people’s bodies are not their own, and that they exist only within the compartmentalised definitions of others.
We must rid ourselves of the notion that saying someone is “small” or “skinny” is a compliment. We must stop using the word “fat” as an insult. We must stop using weight as an indicator of worth – and stop using someone else’s bag of organs as a dinner table topic. Your body is your own. You define yourself. There is an endless cornucopia of compliments that lie within the realm of the non-physical that we may dip into from time to time.
And perhaps let’s just move away from insults altogether.
#MaltaDaily #għajjejtuxbajt
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