I'm so sick of body shaming

I've been observing it more and more and so much more to my liking recently. I'm so sick of it.

Paris 2007

Body shaming, it comes in all sizes and shapes around me, from the way my ex-in-laws always compares the height of his grandchildren every time we meet, how skinny this one is and that one is not, how you (me) should control his diet better. Not much different from my side of the family with (I hope) good intentions but ruthless comments from my aunties always have something to say about my son's look. I was so fed up with all that that I decided to speak up once and for all, respectfully that "Hey, could you please stop all that sh*ts, that's enough, that's body shaming." And magically, they stopped.

Another form of body shaming is the small (seems like) harmless jokes about how someone looks. Uhh, that's the worst. Why? Because people think it's a joke and go for it, with a little bit of forced laugh and a dead inside feeling without knowing why. Maybe the person who was shamed has been experiencing it all her life not knowing she's been shamed, it's learned helplessness. She has conditioned herself to it as part of her life without questioning if she could or should fight back.

This article Miệt Thị Ngoại Hình by Vu Hoang Long from VNExpress recently said it all.

Sự so sánh và quan niệm về một chuẩn tắc xác thịt duy nhất khiến con người bị xếp vào những khuôn mẫu xã hội cố định. Chúng lược bỏ đi tính đa dạng của cả cơ thể tự nhiên, cách bộc lộ bản thân của từng cá nhân, và các yếu tố liên quan đến bệnh lý hoặc tai nạn. Và nguy hiểm hơn cả, nhiều người cho rằng hình thể phía ngoài định nghĩa toàn bộ tính cách và phẩm chất của con người.

I am not a supermodel myself to be clear. I have had all kinds of insecurities about my body since I was as young as I could remember. I haven't changed much still until today, the way I look. Fortunately, the way I think of and see myself is not the same anymore. If only we could manage our expectations about ourselves and others, cause in most cases we build an image in our head thinking hmm that guy's voice sounds very deep and warm on the phone, he must be one of the Hemsworth brothers. 

How about instead of commenting and judging and making jokes about how someone looks, which is something we have nothing to do with or control over, even themselves sometimes, we choose to love them and appreciate them for the beauty of their mind and soul, for who they are?

Would it make our world a better place to be?

This piece from Jimmy O. Yang is just for entertaining, and a little bit of thinking...

T.