Do Not Body Shame Your Children

Body shaming is an act of humiliating someone by criticizing it's body shape or size.

In my younger years, never have I thought or taken such action seriously. Most family members mock me for my body shape and size. The worst, your own family members will laugh at you. I just laugh it out, too, thinking it was never a serious matter.

Not until I reached my teenage years. Me and my brother are in the same school. Unintentionally, he took the attitude of teasing me "fat" or calling me "pig" whenever he sees me. Sometimes he's with friends and I'm with my group of friends. Then they all laugh at me. That's the time when I realized it's not a normal way of addressing someone in that manner. Later on, my friends call me the same.

A friend of mine from the other section has a dark complexion and curly hair. Most of his classmates call him "monkey" and watching them making fun of him is heart breaking. He might be laughing at them but deep inside, I believe he's starting to lose his confidence.

As for my case, I'm known to be the "pig" at home but I never eat like a pig. It's my body size that they always laugh about. And as I'm growing I'm starting to feel uneasy with the words they use against me. I started losing my self esteem. There were times I didn't like to go out to socialize fearing new found friends would judge my figure or hear how old friends would address me. I'm afraid the name they used to call me will spread like virus, so I would better just stay home and watch my favorite movie while eating buckets of popcorn.

Food became my outlet, my guilty pleasure. Cooking became my hobby, then I started improving my kitchen skills. While my size doubled, I never cared until bullies cannot be avoided anymore. Then I realized I had to stop eating (which is never the right way to treat the situation). I'm becoming a teenager and I just had to look "not so fat". The process was really hard. Not eating the right amount of food and not on time is never easy. I was in my early teenage that time so that was really an immature decision of mine.

My choices at a young age brought me to some trouble. Most of the time I experience hyper acidity and acid reflux. It was so like hell burning endlessly. Weight loss was rapidly in effect. My face looked so stressed. That's the downside of it.

After achieving this, I was never proud because my name "fat girl", "piggy", "piglet", "pig" seemed engraved in people's brains. They still call me that even if I already looked anorexic.

So, you see it only started within the family as a joke. Never expected its bad effect to my physical, mental and social life. Today my brother call me "jelly fish", "blob fish".. I sometimes feel bad about it but I'm old enough to understand and I just take it as his endearment to me. 😊😊

Some possible bad effects of body shaming:

• anorexia - due to fear og gaining weight, a person tend to suffer from this mental disorder.

• physical health problems such as headaches, stomach pains and low energy.

• social anxiety disorder might occur due to the fear of getting humiliated by others

• massive weight gain for thin individuals.

• eating disorders leading to different diseases.

• depression where most cases nowadays leads to suicide.

My experience is just a simple case compared to others. I was able to handle it maybe because I always look into the bright side of everything. But people handle things differently and this might happen to you or your family. Let's stop body shaming. Start at home. 😉😉