Be ashamed of body shaming

Body shaming is one of the many reasons that people struggle with mental health. This was highlighted recently when World Mental Health Day was observed on 10 October 2020 by people across the globe with the goal of educating people about mental issues.

Counselling psychologist at the North-West University (NWU) Monique de Klerk says, “body shaming can cause tremendous distress within an individual, which might lead to the person experiencing trauma”. She further adds that, “being body shamed can limit an individual to accept themselves and put themselves out there to form meaningful relationships”.

According to Oxford dictionary body shaming is the action or practice of humiliating someone by making mocking or critical comments about their body shape. Therefore, Monique emphasises that body shaming can lead to various psychological disorders as explained in the the 5th edition of th Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5). These psychological disorders might include Major Depressive Disorder, Persistent Depressive Disorder, Anxiety disorders, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Subclinical Eating Disorders and Clinical Eating Disorders and Substance Related Disorders. Also, Non-Suicidal Self-harming behaviour and suicidal tendencies.

The topic of body shaming has been brought up again on World Mental Health Day by people sharing their stories on Instagram and by making short videos opening up on how body shaming affected their mental health or posting pictures of their bodies in different angles and illustrating how only some of the angles are acceptable in society. Sarah Nicole Landry who hosts The papaya podcast tweeted, “I wish there were more photos of people talking about their healthy lifestyle without a photo of their body accompanying it”.

But the phenomenon attracts attention on all kinds of platforms. Recently there has been a TikTok trend where people post “What I eat in a day”, with people showing off their food for the day —most of the time, very little food. Multiple users of the app have said that this trend glorifies eating disorders with comments like “this is super problematic” because young girls might copy these TikTok creators and eat the same.

People need to eat based on their own body and not someone else’s. Social media plays a big part in what people think is “acceptable” and then body shaming takes place. NWU student Qailah Adams (21) says, “I think body shaming happens, because society has created those unrealistic ideas of what we should look like to be considered pretty, fit or healthy”.

Registered dietitian Dr Chantell Witten who formerly worked at the NWU, says it is important to accept your body shape or size. Be confident in yourself and build coping resilient skills to negate the negative comments. She further adds “all body types must be acknowledged and handled with sensitivity even in obesity and anorexia, but we encourage everyone to work towards healthy body weight and healthy body size. Overweight and obesity is a risk disease like diabetes, hypertension and cancers”.

There are plenty of articles available in newspapers, digital newspapers, magazines and on social media on what body shaming is, but not a lot on what to do when you are confronted with body shaming. In a student town like Potchefstroom there are lots of different people and body shapes so the following tips might help a student.

An article by Amanda Richards from the Bustle in 2015 says that the first thing you need to remember is that it is not about you, whatever they say about you just reflects on their own misconceptions. Some people might not even know they are body shaming, phrases like “good food”, “bad food” and “real women looks like …” might be harmful. If someone close to you says that to you, just tell them that it contributes to body shaming. A last tip is that people should remember that this experience is not every experience, someone can shame you for something and another person will love that about you.

Dr Witten says, “We cannot control what others say to us or how they treat us, but we can control how we respond to it and how it makes us feel”. — Lance Agulhas, Leigh-Ann Kock, Zandile Khumalo, Tshenolo Motuku, Keisha Stuart