Body shaming: substantially used by many, discouraged by hardly any.

"Never judge a book by its cover” many of you would have heard this phrase at different stages of your life. What comes in your mind after hearing or reading this? Most probably we think after hearing it that we should not judge anyone by the way they look: physically, complexion wise,  by the number of hair he/she has on his/her head, height wise, or what else comes in the category of physical appearance right! But there is one   underlying protestation in this phrase. 

Every feeling or each thing has a presupposition and entailment attached to it, so if someone says “never judge a book by its cover” then the presupposition is, there must be a book and someone owns it and most probably would judge it by the way it looks. We do judge people by the way they look that’s the underlying claim of this phrase and we need some effort to think entirely opposite of it by giving it a chance to present what it holds inside it and restrain ourselves to not give our judgements on the face of it. Fat shaming or body shaming has become such a dystopian thing for the people who have slightly heavy bodies. I don’t know why certain complexion, height and body weight is being celebrated even though these traits all together perform the same kind of functions in a body. Bio diversity calls for the acceptance of different body structures, skin colors, different heights, facial features and intellectual capabilities. 

I always wanted to confront that one person who first put the beauty standard on the table but with the passage of time I realized that it doesn’t matter who started it but what matters is that why you are bound to carry that legacy of bullying others. Yes you bully others by shattering their confidence in themselves and their capabilities by diverting their attention towards something they have no control on. 

Imagine you are passing a comment on a woman as being fat who is suffering from PCOS (Polycystic ovary syndrome) where every one out of five women faces this disease, how would it affect her  mental health when she is already suffering from enough in her life. Or you consider someone who has a thyroid disease. Thyroid disease can affect anyone: men, women, infants, teenagers and the elderly. It can be present at birth (typically hypothyroidism) and it can develop as you age (often after menopause in women). When you have too little thyroid hormone in your body, it can make you feel tired, you might gain weight and you may even be unable to tolerate cold temperatures, how they would control it by just your one comment. We not even bully others but we make them to perceive themselves as imperfect in the face of society even though everything we observe or perceive in this world is imperfectly perfect. We all need to analyze our thoughts  before speaking anything because it really shapes the way we perceive life. In philosophy there is a field called hermeneutic. It has to do with understanding with logos, language, perception, and meaning. It explores how the language we speak, the things we subject ourselves to, shape the way we perceive life. 

Judging anyone because they look different from you is totally unacceptable. Think before you speak something to others and if you can’t control your thoughts or unnecessary opinions about others then one philosophical sentence may help you out “An idiot speaks when he has to speak something and a wise speaks when he has something to speak”. At the end I would like to address people who are the victims of body shaming, who you are is too vast to be classified by the states of your attitude, or categorized by the opinions of others. How others see you is not as important as how you see yourself. So love and respect the person you are. 

AUTHOR: HIRA ARSHAD