According to most definitions body shaming is defined as “the act or practice of subjecting someone to criticism or mockery for SUPPOSED bodily faults or imperfections” or “Body shaming is the act of saying something negative about a person’s body.
It can be about your own body or someone else’s. The commentary can be about a person’s size, age, hair, clothes, food, hair, or level of perceived attractiveness.
There are so many interlinked definitions which are beyond my topic today. But two glaring examples are when you are considered obese and thin. Kashmiri crude terms being “Gaav chay gamech or Hogaddi chukh”.
But interestingly according to the World Health Organization HEALTHY = means a combination of three interconnected things: physical, mental, and social well-being.
Measuring your actual health means examining how well you function in your own body and mind, and in your interactions with others. Can you complete all the physical tasks required by your life without injury or fatigue? Are you able to regulate your emotions? Are you maintaining relationships?
If you can answer yes to all three, that means you’re pretty healthy. If you can’t, this offers a guide to discovering what you can improve. That’s a far better approach than focusing on size, which is only a byproduct of a single component in the health triad.
And yes I am in no way saying if I am obese that is good, but there are ways how we want to help? If it is help I will take an obese person in confidence and try to convince him/her gently by facts not by taunts.
There is enough scientific evidence and research available done by researchers at SKIMS Soura to universities of Europe about obesity and link with diabetes, heart ailments, but what we forget is due to constant taunts any obese person has low self esteem and there is a heredity component associated with obesity.
History trivia tells us there were 31 famines in India when under British colonial occupation and research tells us that risk of diabetes is more in those whose grandparents faced famine.
A 2022 study, `Prevalence and factors associated with overweight and obesity among school children in Kashmir valley: a community-based cross-sectional study’, was conducted by GMC, Srinagar, and SKIMS, Soura.
It estimated the prevalence and factors associated with overweight and obesity among school children aged 5-15 years in Kashmir valley. A total of 9,576 students both male and female, comprising 56.6% (5416) and girls 43.4% (4160) were evaluated. According to study ““The prevalence of overweight children was 24.7% while that of obesity was 11.5%,” So will we mock or shame them all and push them into various stress disorders? No that is not the way but most of us are doing it.
It is true that our role models are now sports personalities, or people in modeling or film industries, while it is good to become health conscious it is not good to find shortcuts to look as they look.
One common pattern in Kashmir which I have seen is that if a boy is considered thin by society, without doing any endocrinological checkup by a qualified endocrinologist he is forced to join gyms and purchase highly dangerous steroid supplements there. Again forgetting that being obese or thin has many factors. Being thin and not getting married is also common here and again short cuts, purchasing unverified products shown on various TV channels.
Body shaming is common before and after marriage with husband and wife taunting each other, which does no good but more harm.
Parents often tell their children “Who will marry you? You are so fat?”Again this is wrong , we do not need to reduce our weight to get married, we need to maintain ideal weight for our body so that WE remain healthy and do not fall prey to diseases like diabetes, hypertension .
Nowadays not all but some parents give junk food like potato chips to kids when they start crying or even mobiles for babies to play with if they start weeping! Why? Is it the lack of time as per some parents or elders? So from childhood we are poisoning our babies with fast food and gadgets, results are again lack of physical activity leading to obesity as well as children showing little interest in reading hard copies of books as they are addicted to bright lights on our mobile phones.
So what to do?
First of all visit any endocrinologist near you and try to find if there are some medical causes. For your emotional health, work on strengthening your self-esteem. You can take help of a counselor in any government hospital or in the private sector.
Request to parents, elders and teachers
Highlight a child’s strengths. Always be on the lookout for ways to praise what your child is good at – helping others, painting pictures, calligraphy doing jigsaws, playing Cricket or Football , or being cheerful and helping in kitchen and gardening, preparing you to attend weddings in their own innocent ways. Make a list of what your child is good at and find ways of praising them. For example, if your child is a wonderful artist and obese display their artwork in the kitchen and change the pictures regularly. And gently talk to him/her about obesity and correlations with diabetes, hypertension etc.
Do not make any one patient of depression, anxiety disorders or trauma by humiliating and constant taunts.
The author is actively involved in raising awareness about Non-Communicable Diseases and Prevention of Suicides.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.