Our preoccupation with how we look is increasingly getting worse. It’s clear that the sheer volume of body image messages has grown exponentially, generated by both, day-to-day media and social media. Take Susan Sarandon for example, who recently said, “I think the whole culture with selfies and all of this business has made us more and more self-conscious and less and less attached to our tribe.” She points out, quite correctly, that our obsession with selfies is leading to an increasingly narcissistic world.
Body shaming is when you criticise someone for the way you look, and with our disconnect from people there has been the birth of an indelible mean streak, one that results in people using the internet and the media to either bully or insult people – mostly about their bodies.
While males of all ages are slowly starting to feel the pressure of looking a certain way, females have forever been hounded to constantly conform to a particular look and/or body type – and are being vilified if they don’t. Whether it is through messages propagating ‘figure flattering’ styles, or guides to ‘dressing for your body type’, everything just encourages women to be ashamed of being who they are, so that they judge, aspire and ridicule what they see. This is to push them to aspire to be something that they are not – which, according to them, defines ‘success’.
Here’s a quick look at problematic body image messages that target different age groups:
So how do we tackle all this negativity?
Remember, people change. The body is not permanent – if you decide to change the way you look because you want to, that’s great. But never do it because you are ashamed – you’re worth so much more than that.