The world is getting more and progressive as the days go by. The fat acceptance movement is growing rapidly and fervent campaigning to encourage acceptance of women's bodies has swept the internet, as well as the mainstream media. However, we live in the age of insta-famous models, photoshop and distorted ideas of femininity and womanhood. In a twisted turn of events we seemed to have gone back on ourselves and provide conflicting messages of self-confidence to women (and men) everywhere. The hit singer Meghan Trainor tells us that "every inch of you is perfect" but only if we aren't "skinny bitches" and Victoria's Secret launches a campaign called "The Perfect Body" featuring size 0 models.
In January this year, an advertisement on the London Underground for Protein World caused a huge backlash featuring a rather toned model with the caption asking if the observer was "Beach Body Ready?"
The extremely negative responses to the advertisement still didn't manage to drown out
the few who saw absolutely nothing wrong with the image. Katie Hopkins, British television personality and columnist, openly supports the adverts saying there is "huge acceptance" for being
fat and there are very few who don't take offence to being told what a
beach body is. Personally, I don't know what world Katie Hopkins is
living in but it definitely isn't this one. The world we live in is not only not fat-friendly
but it more often presents itself as not woman-friendly. From one side of
the media, we are told "real women have curves" but from another, we are
told that a beach-worthy body must look like how Protein World thinks it should. The perfect size - is it a size 6? Is it a size 12? What happens when you don't have curves like Beyonce but you don't look like Kate Upton either? What if your wide hips don't come with the 36DD bra size
that they are expected to?
Really, there is no perfect body. You cannot win. There will always
be something wrong according to someone else. Society, this includes
both men and women, finds endless ways to shame women into picking their
bodies apart until they dissect all their flaws and search for ways to fix them.
Why? Because industry depends on it. Billions of pounds rely on women being
brought to puddles of tears when looking in the mirror, leaving big businesses to thrive off
a young girl's low self esteem. Products like slimming shakes, botox and cosmetic surgery
procedures are marketed to an insecure audience, creating a
desire for something you don't need but society thinks you do. Society
breaks you in order to fix yourself with these products.
Furthermore, with the arrival of
social media, this need has increased tenfold. It's not just in our
everyday lives that we work on ourselves, it's our online lives.
Creating a persona online makes it easier to seem like you fit the image that we put on a pedestal. Simultaneously, we're putting pressure on
ourselves to recreate this in our real lives.
It's 2015 and it's never been more difficult to accept your body as beautiful,
no matter what it looks like. I struggle every day to stop myself from
hating my body but I am well aware. I'm aware of my surroundings and how easy it
is to hate myself. Being female nowadays is a lot like the lyrics in Kelly Clarkson's song "You Can't Win": "If you're thin, poor little walking disease. If you're not, they're all screaming obese."
So what do we do? How do we love ourselves in a
world that tells us otherwise? I'm still figuring it out myself but
simply just start by surrounding yourself with people who support you. It's not okay
to keep people around who don't accept your body confidence and encourage negative thoughts. But when it comes down to it, it's about
saying a big, fat "screw you!" to body shaming, whether you are a size 4 or a size 14.
Recently, the footage of Sandra
Bland's aggressive encounter with a police officer in America stopping her for a "routine traffic stop" has been all over social media, Twitter as such. If you haven't seen this video, please do so before you read on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBh3wzXd3vg&spfreload=10
In the video, it's pretty clear that the officer is revelling in his own
authority and pushing for the harshest of sentences. Without a doubt, Sandra Bland
was right when she said in the voice mail to her friend - "How did
switching lanes with no signal turn into all of this?"
Because you were black, Sandra. And because that officer was a racist.
Moreover, another American has died unnecessarily simply because of the fact
that the American police force are still, up to this day and age, embedded with layers of
racism - and funnily enough still won't learn. It's painful and inhuman
every time a story like this hits the news, which seems to be becoming a
monthly occurrence, minus the ones that don't hit the
headlines - which happen every day under our noses. Even so, the headlines
are so far from the truth it hits us with an even bigger punch.
This is racism. Not just a shooting, police violence or suicide. It's racism.
The same was happening with the Charleston shooting earlier this year.
This absurd event wasn't just a crazed man wandering into a church full of people,
firing his weapon like a child with silly string - that was a racist man
targeting black people and marking his targets. Was it reported in the
latter way though? Of course it wasn't. Why? Because America fail to admit on the global stage that it has not dealt with racism.
Take Donald Trump for example, America's tall and proud would-be brother
to Nigel Farage. He's running for president in the 2016 elections and was fondly
quoted saying "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing
crime. They're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak
to border guards, and they're telling us what we're getting." in
regard to Mexicans crossing the border.
I'll admit, he's probably worse than Farage.
The worst part is that from the polls and ratings, he's actually a top
candidate. Another example of an opinionated multi-millionaire bringing a meaningless form of politics to a country in immediate need of addressing it's problems with racism.
Sandra Bland's death has unusual written all over it. No one will ever likely know what went on in her jail cell that led to
her death. However, the fact is that something just didn't add up. An extremely hostile police officer forcefully arrests a black woman for a
wrong manoeuvre and then she, under questionable circumstances, dies in
police custody in the following days? You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand the truth behind this.
I can't expect a nation who host's a population of almost 600 million people to hear the voice of a teenager in a small town in England, but, America - you still have a problem with race and it needs
fixing. This is not something that should go ignored.
