Body Shaming 101

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.