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discouroborose:
Here’s the thing about body-shaming: you can’t do it on an individual basis. You can never body-shame only one person. If you make fun of a physical feature of someone you hate, it’s going to affect everyone who shares that feature, regardless of whether they share the trait that made you want to mock them in the first place.
If you make fun of a racist actress’s lips, you are implying that that feature is bad, and then anyone who shares that physical feature is going to be hit by that, regardless of whether they are racist themselves.
If you make fun of an evil politician’s body type, anyone who shares that body type will be hit by that.
When you body-shame, you are tying personality traits or evil actions to physical traits. You are tying racism to fatness. You are tying misogyny to big noses. You’re taking morally neutral traits–physical ones–and attaching unnecessary moral weight to them. Attractiveness is not synonymous with goodness. Unattractiveness is not synonymous with evil.
Suddenly being fat isn’t just a physical trait–it’s an indicator of moral worth.
It doesn’t matter if someone “deserves” to be body-shamed or not. There is no way to mock their appearance without it also hurting innocent people who happen to share features with that person.
When people say, for example, “stop fat-shaming Donald Trump” they’re not saying “you’re being so mean to Trump and he doesn’t deserve it.” They’re saying “you are inadvertently hurting people other than Trump, including some people who are already hurt by Trump himself.”
(Your picture was not posted)
discouroborose:
Here’s the thing about body-shaming: you can’t do it on an individual basis. You can never body-shame only one person. If you make fun of a physical feature of someone you hate, it’s going to affect everyone who shares that feature, regardless of whether they share the trait that made you want to mock them in the first place.
If you make fun of a racist actress’s lips, you are implying that that feature is bad, and then anyone who shares that physical feature is going to be hit by that, regardless of whether they are racist themselves.
If you make fun of an evil politician’s body type, anyone who shares that body type will be hit by that.
When you body-shame, you are tying personality traits or evil actions to physical traits. You are tying racism to fatness. You are tying misogyny to big noses. You’re taking morally neutral traits–physical ones–and attaching unnecessary moral weight to them. Attractiveness is not synonymous with goodness. Unattractiveness is not synonymous with evil.
Suddenly being fat isn’t just a physical trait–it’s an indicator of moral worth.
It doesn’t matter if someone “deserves” to be body-shamed or not. There is no way to mock their appearance without it also hurting innocent people who happen to share features with that person.
When people say, for example, “stop fat-shaming Donald Trump” they’re not saying “you’re being so mean to Trump and he doesn’t deserve it.” They’re saying “you are inadvertently hurting people other than Trump, including some people who are already hurt by Trump himself.”
(Your picture was not posted)
