Wednesday 17 June 2015

On the subject of body shaming...

When it comes to body shaming, it’s fair to say that people don’t treat skinny shaming the same way as the treat fat shaming. It’s wrong to call someone fat – presumably because we only see fat as a word with a million negative connotations, despite the fact that it’s not an inherently negative word – but it’s seen as complimentary to tell someone they’re soooo skinny. Ages ago, when I first started blogging, I wrote a post about the Dove ‘real women’ advertising campaign. The women in the photo were of various skin colours, they were different heights and had a nice mix of hair colours. Of course, they were all real women, but there was not one skinny girl in that advert. So are skinny girls not real? Sorry to burst the media bubble, but they are. Some girls are naturally skinny, and some are battling with eating disorders, and that doesn’t make them any less real than a girl with curves. Representation matters and just like it’s wrong to only show skinny bodies in adverts, it’s wrong to ignore them altogether because you think it fits some sort of body-positive agenda.


I tweeted something along these lines a while back – defending girls and boys who are victims of skinny shaming – and I was instantly shot back with “fat girls shouldn’t talk about skinny shaming” which in all honesty made me laugh for a good few hours. I’m certainly not a skinny girl myself, but at the time I was a size 10 and far from being fat either. That aside, I was literally calling people out for body shaming others: I was defending people who are on the skinny end of the scale, only for one of them to have a go at me for doing so because I’m not skinny myself. It beggars belief, at the risk of sounding about 80.


If you’re against one form of body shaming, you should be against all forms of body shaming. If you wouldn’t like somebody to say it to or about you, don’t say it to or about somebody else. As a bigger person, you have every right to defend others from skinny shaming. As a smaller person, you have every right to defend others from fat shaming. It works both ways; it’s a two way street, one on which we should all be comfortable with the size we are.

7 comments:

  1. This is such a great post, I totally agree with you and think it should be spoken more about

    http://thriftyvintagefashion.blogspot.co.uk/

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  2. I think you are completely right. Size doesn't matter as long as the person is comfortable as they are! xx

    www.thejulyjournal.com

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  3. As if someone said that to you! How rude!! I've always been super skinny, it's from my dad's side of the family, we're all tiny haha. I had to endure so much bs at school, I probably got more than anyone else did :/ I had people saying I was anorexic and that they only cared about my health lol yeh riiight. And had girls poke me in the stomach while getting changed for gym and tell me to eat a macdonalds. Not cool. One girl also told me to get boob reduction because 'big boobs look silly on skinny girls'. Oh ok thanks love. Everyone is different and should just not care so much how we look! I don't anymore haha! xo
    amber love

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  4. Love this post. No type of body shaming is acceptable. Ridiculous that some people think it is!

    Suitcase and Sandals Blog XX

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  5. I hate body shaming, i get it all the time because im the "biggest" in my family!

    emyii90.blogspot.co.uk

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  6. Great post, you hit the nail on the head.

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  7. I can't say enough how much body shaming annoys me. I'm tall and naturally thin and the focus on body positivity only relating to curvy figures can be upsetting - while I, of course, hate fat shaming and know that curvier girls do face much more scrutiny than thin girls, it's hard when comments like "real women have curves" and "bones are for dogs, meat is for men" are said and shared on social media without any argument. Those types of comments pretend to be all for body positivity, but they simply build up one group of women at the expense of another, and are just another way to make women feel like our bodies can never be good enough. I also think while the media focuses on skinny women as being 'perfect', they are always skinny women with curvy boobs, hips and a butt - which is just as unattainable for many thin women as suddenly having smaller boobs and a narrow waist is for curvier women.

    x

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