Fat shaming cards
Recently I have been thinking about the mainstreams in our society. What comes up to your mind? I can think of healthy way of life, “smart is new sexy” and tolerance. Doubtless, the last one is a solid point because more and more we are having tolerant attitudes towards sexual minorities, disabled people, religious communities etc. Nevertheless deep inside we stay quite cruel and critical to people with different appearances.
The public in general tend to believe in the idea of hating fat people. I must tell you that it is not at all about just “not liking them”; it is a total and absolute attitude consisting of anger, disrespect and despite.
A good example of such attitude is the incident on the London Underground. A group that claims to “hate and resent fat people” handed commuters cards telling them that they are a “fat, ugly human”. Existence of such group itself stuns you badly, doesn't it? We cannot resist seeing how much intolerance these cards give us themselves. Moreover, this is what their content is - “by eating less you will be better off, slimmer and happier” and “we disapprove of your wasting NHS (health insurance) money to treat your selfish greed while half the world starves”. However, one must admit that the problem of a “starving world” is somewhere on the level of White House and G7. It has nothing to do with overweight people all over the world, most of whom are actually struggling with confidence and eating disorders.
First and foremost, we must all be equal and must all have freedom of choice in any aspect of our life. One way or another let me justify my idea a little more.
1) We are all victims of public opinion – society gives us some ideas that influence us and creates those so called “standards”: standards of life, standards of style and standards of beauty. Apparently, stout people are not considered beautiful or I would even say not “in style” nowadays.
2) The next reason. People will tell you that you need to lose weight to be attractive or that you have to change your style or your hair or any number of things in order to fit into society's “beauty standards.” These people are always wrong. There is no “standard for beauty” because there is no “standard” for people. We come in all forms, and all of these forms have their own kinds of beauty.
3) We forget about the fact that we are all different. Surprisingly this is our human right! We have a freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom of action and free will at the end. Moreover, nobody can judge us.
4) By the way this is our next step – judging. People love judging others, looking and pointing at others' mistakes without looking at themselves. What a paradox human beings are.
From these arguments, one must conclude that we should stop judging others and start judging ourselves… Nevertheless it is not easy to except - changes start with ourselves, but not changing others..!
