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  • Essay / Body Image and Fat Shaming

    When we did a health check at MUIC as per the university's freshman procedure, I was already looking forward to weighing myself in front of other people. The guy who examined me chuckled when he saw my weight; he and the lady standing next to him looked at each other and started laughing. The lady muttered, "I can't believe it" and assumed I couldn't understand or hear what they were saying. Why does everyone think they have the power to make comments about other people's sizes without thinking? Body shaming is a prevalent problem these days where it is ideal to have a certain body type. This issue is particularly close to my heart because I have been shamed by my body and it is essential that people know that their body does not define them. This essay will explore why people are body shamed, two types of body shame, and their effects. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayBody image can be described as the evaluation of both positive and negative emotions for one's body parts and their characteristics by itself (Nayir et al., 2016). This includes how a person perceives themselves in relation to society's expectations. Society's expectations, especially of women, to meet such superficial standards, are so overwhelming that children begin to listen, embody and impersonate them from a very young age . Additionally, people who shame others may not be aware that the media presents the most unreal, edited, and idealized depictions of what is beautiful. Additionally, mainstream media is generally recognized as a dominant provider of representations and information regarding the idealistic body that women and girls are expected to aspire to. To clarify things further, some multinational entertainment companies influence the public's mind by reconstructing the opinion and expectations of common people regarding the perfect look. For example, lingerie advertisements like Victoria's Secret persuade you to believe that women who have thin waists, big butts, wide hips and full lips look like angels. Unfortunately, many individuals often imitate these models without thinking, which leads to a distortion in their mindset towards the body. So there are two types of body shame; fat shame and skinny shame. Fat-shaming is the act of humiliating a person considered fat by making an overall self-assessment of the person as “bad” or a “failure” based solely on their weight (Meulman, 2019). Additionally, some people may suffer from conditions in which certain medications, such as those for brain injuries and tumors, can also cause binge eating and obesity (Burnett, 2016). Even though these factors of obesity would be less common, I think it is wrong to assume that overweight people have complete control over their behavior. Skinny shaming is the opposite of fat-shaming and is a form of examining people for their thin appearance. It's as bad as fat shaming, although it's not that big of a deal. Body shaming is usually obvious and deliberate, but most of the time people don't realize that it is also offensive. For example, my friend had trouble gaining weight, so everyone made fun of her with obnoxious statements like "you look like a stick, you have no flesh at all." There is an evolving fashion of either ridiculing other people's bodies or continually giving advice on how to.