{"id":14170,"date":"2016-10-24T10:51:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T15:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=14170"},"modified":"2017-06-26T12:04:59","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T17:04:59","slug":"my-voice-body-positivity-and-shaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2016\/10\/24\/my-voice-body-positivity-and-shaming\/","title":{"rendered":"My Voice: Body positivity and shaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout time, it seems to me that a woman\u2019s body has always carried so much extraneous meaning and judgment. What your body looks like, what your body should look like and how that affects what others think of you, are common every day thoughts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The appearance of a woman carrying an abundance of fat on her body, once used to be an implicit translation to a woman\u2019s utter beauty, wealth and a healthy, fertile body.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, some countries still carry a similar attitude, such as the Tonga Islands and Tahiti. <\/span><\/p>\n

As time goes on, people\u2019s opinions transition with their socioeconomic status. Having food to eat in the U.S. is not a huge worry to most people now, instead we actually seem to have become more concerned with restricting our food, desperately trying to find the perfect diet so we can achieve the ideal look.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cases of eating disorders, like bulimia or anorexia have been described throughout history, but weren\u2019t publicly talked about or common practice among females until around the 1970s. Girls becoming so desperate to achieve the \u2018ideal female look,\u2019 they would risk taking their own life. <\/span><\/p>\n

Through the more recent years,\u2019 in defense to rampant fat shaming and self-abuse, females, including some powerful public figures, have been speaking up and promoting the body positive movement among women more. <\/span><\/p>\n

What the body positive movement means to me, is the stance women must take on to media and institutionalized beauty ideals, by responding with unconditional love and admiration of their own body, as well as others. The eradication of the mindset that only some bodies may be seen as beautiful or desirable.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems to me that we were in this stage of fat shaming and being skinny obsessed, then as the body positive movement took trend we started to make progress, but somewhere along people got very confused, especially the media.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are people who have taken a lot of pride in their curvy bodies, which is great! Except they have decided that in order for them to love their curves, they must denigrate bodies with less curves than themselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

Skinny shaming is becoming increasingly normalized in society, especially as big media influencers learn to capitalize off of it, such as Meghan Trainor. <\/span><\/p>\n

Trainor made her big break into the world of Pop, with a well-known and self-proclaimed \u2018body positive\u2019 song, titled \u201cAll About That Bass\u201d containing lyrics such as, \u201cboys like a little more booty to hold at night\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m bringing booty back, go ahead and tell them skinny b*tches that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t see how Meghan Trainor\u2019s song sends a healthy and positive message to girls, when ultimately her message is that her curvaceous body is more attractive and desirable to men than a thinner body would be. It seems to me, that the point she is really making is that her body is superior to a significant chunk of other female\u2019s bodies.<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel that we have made a transition into a society, where instead of embracing all different types of bodies and proportions, now we are just ranking them. We go back and forth from skinny shaming to fat shaming so harshly.<\/span><\/p>\n

While juggling between wanting to look like Miranda Kerr and Kim Kardashian, it seems to me that women have constructed the \u2018new ideal body,\u2019 which I like to describe as the \u2018Kylie Jenner look.\u2019 Ample sized chest, tiny waist, big hips and thin long legs. In other words, half skinny, half curvy. <\/span><\/p>\n

The \u2018Kylie Jenner look\u2019 is just not realistic for most females, as most body ideals we come up with aren\u2019t. There are 3.52 billion women on this planet, only a fraction of all of these people can be skinny, curvy or half and half without using money, plastic surgery or self-abusive practices.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is where I become especially worried because what happens to someone\u2019s mental health when they feel constantly pressured to change their physical image with every trend that comes and goes? <\/span><\/p>\n

When we constantly seek to achieve a particular body image, we become so physically focused we may begin to overlook the importance of education, work, family, friends and eventually we cut corners with our mental health in many ways, some being the justification of things like skipping meals or excessive physical activity.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is so important to me that we use the body positive movement to promote self-love and acceptance for however we look because how we look is not going to change the world, what changes the world is what we have, know and what we are going to say or do about it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Just think about how much time and money people waste trying to change their physical image, comparing their body to others as if they have something to prove with the inches and pounds they carry.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know that sounds so cheesy and as someone who still struggles with body image, I know it is not that simple, but it is time to recognize the problem. <\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s revolutionize our society\u2019s view of body image.<\/span><\/p>\n

Make it known to yourself and the people around you, that whether Cosmopolitan says you\u2019re an hourglass, ruler, triangle, orange, pear or apple, every body shape is beautiful and you can wear whatever you want, as well as think and do whatever you are passionate about. You are so much more than your decomposable shell.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hannah Hamlin<\/strong>
\nReporter<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout time, it seems to me that a woman\u2019s body has always carried so much extraneous meaning and judgment. What your body looks like, what your body should look like and how that affects what others think of you, are common every day thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":14125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1573,1574,2008,1407,1384],"class_list":["post-14170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-body-positivity","tag-body-shaming","tag-hannah-hamlin","tag-my-voice","tag-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Shaming.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3Gy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15709,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14170\/revisions\/15709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}