
Last night I shared a post on my personal page about a friend of mine who had had a body shaming incident ( she told her she needed to watch what she ate or she would end up FAT) and all of the comments were very supportive for my friend. I was not happy when I wrote the post because my friend was really hurting. See my friend has had severe disordered eating most of her life and had been bullied around her weight in high school. She has battled and finally was in a place of love. A place where she was being kind to her body. Loving it with good food, movement and even her thoughts around it. I was devastated to think that the words of someone could undo all that hard work but this friend of mine, spent time in anger, frustration, anxiety and she cried and cried and cried, saying it took her back to the feeling of high school. But then she made the decision to stand up for herself and her own values. See she said I don't treat people this way and I don't deserve to be treated this way. So she wrote a very loving note to the lady in question, that just told her how she was hurt. Saying things like she said can really cause harm as you never know peoples story or what they are going through. She was not abrupt just to the point and said she thought she should know that it wasn't ok to say those kind of things.
The lady replied very apologetic.

See sometimes we don't know what harm we are doing and sometimes it comes from a place of love and care and it is the perception in which we take it. I have a feeling the lady must have her own ongoing issues and probably thought she was doing my friend a favour probably thought her advice was warranted.
It is lucky my friend has done the work to go OK that is her perception and this is mine, also her standing up for her own values made her not fall back into that spiral again.
I did not want it to be a negative post and wanted to show my friend the support other women share...
But also I look a little differently at it today too as my friend is OK and all is well, that we ALL, even those who may say things that are not kind are going through something. It is really important to just be kind and try to always come from a place of love.
Another friend of mine says she cannot stand the word skinny, to her it feels awful, where as someone like myself long for someone to call me skinny (maybe thin) (because I have always viewed myself overweight, another story for another time) So maybe I would use it as a term on endearment and she finds it harmful. It is all about our perceptions.
Although the word skinny is a bit harsh I think I prefer thin or lean so I get where she is coming from there.

Another friend finds the word curvaceous, to be a horrible word, she sees it as frumpy or fat, where as to me it means sexy, gorgeous.
My mother used the phrase ten tonne tessie. Since I was a little girl. She may have been just saying you are getting bigger (sitting on her knee, she is a very small woman)
I used to say chubba bubba to my babies in the most loving of terms but maybe their perception was that they were too chubby.
Who knows. It is very hard to say the right thing so it is certainly best to look at it for maybe the fact that they are not being unkind that they are using terms of endearment or maybe they too have their own issues around it. In saying that it is still in NO WAY right to belittle or to be unkind to anyone and no one should really be commenting on anyone's size, the way they eat or their bodies appearance.
Comments