You may be body shaming someone and not even realize it.
This post is EXTREMELY personal for me.
Growing up, we weren't the most fortunate family (Common for a lot of families in my community) , we didn't have much money meaning not so much food/clothes etc. I was an outcast because of how I looked, but whatever. Who wasn't? There were a lot of things I was self conscious about. My weight wasn't one of them until I was constantly told about it. "Do you have an eating disorder?", "Are you anorexic?", "You probably can still fit in the kids section.", "How do you even have sex? You're so small!". People NEED to understand. Besides these comments just being stupid and annoying, It's actually just as harmful to the person who's skinny, as it is to the person who is over weight to be told these things.
They are negative. If the person does not pride themselves on how small they are, don't unwelcomely start telling them how unhealthy and underweight they are. Those are not positive words!
Someone close to me, their mother actually told me she would be upset if she found out I had an eating disorder. What a way to turn a positive into a negative. I was upset because I have normal eating habits. I am not sick, and for someone to act as if I look sickly or like I have an unhealthy disorder of some type is a horrible feeling. It's turned me into a meaner person. When someone says something about my weight now, I don't just keep quiet like I did as a kid. I tell them to watch what they say, and not in a nice way. Once you've been hearing the same negativity constantly and just about daily through out your whole life, you get sick of it.
Just as an over weight person would starve themselves to lose weight because of this shaming, I have actually tried to over eat. Of course it didn't work, it only made me sick. A lot of people don't realize how big of a deal this is. I'm sure someone's reading and thinking "boo hoo, the skinny girl is getting teased for being skinny? Big deal." But it is, if being skinny is made into something that is disgusting and unnattractive.
I do feel for over weight people because I know what is like to feel bad about your body and weight. I realize it's different but still the same in many ways. Honestly, a skinny person is more likely to get shamed to their face than an over weight person is just because it's more acceptable to tell someone they are "way too skinny" than to call someone way too fat. That's the actual truth. And while an underweight person may or may not be facing the same challenges as someone who's overweight, the mental damage is the same. I can assure you.
I do realize that when people do say negative things to underweight people it's often because they are jealous. I had a heart to heart conversation with an old co worker because she laughed at me eating a big slice of pizza and it actually enfuriated me that someone would laugh at me while I ate. She had often commented whenever I ate or if she didn't see me eat especially, and at some point I told her to shut up. She explained that she had self esteem issues and was unhappy with her weight and that made me understand. But it doesn't make her right to take out her inner issues on someone else who actually is dealing with the same thing.
I am just now accepting myself at months away from 22 weighing only 2 pounds more than I did in middle school. I can never get to 100 lbs. Though, I am in a relationship with someone who practically worships my body and it's great. There's someone for everyone, and that's the real honest truth. Shaming is shaming, so keep your words to yourself.
