The first time I heard Mehgan Trainor's almost invasively catchy song, 'All About The Bass,' I thought- awesome! Here's someone sticking up for a the 'curvy' girl and sounding fabulous in spreading this statement. The video is amazing to say the least, purely for this guy...
And then I did what I do with every song I really like and tried to memorise the lyrics to sing in the shower or sing on the way to work. I got up to this bit, 'Yeah my momma she told me don't worry about your size [shooowap wap] she said "boys like a little more booty to hold at niiight."' and I remember kind of wincing almost after singing it thinking, 'okay...*nodding* I should appreciate myself because skinny girls have smaller butts and boys will like me for having more junk in the trunk.'
Hm.
So I still love this song. And on any given night, if this came on in a bar or whatever I'd profess my love for it and proceed to sing it badly (and possibly dance like my video-hero up top).
It occurred to me that this song is still kind of shaming skinny girls and was a kind of, 'stooping to their level' form of expression that is as classy in effect as instragram hotties who parade their figures for a living.
Then that got me thinking some more about Shaming. Fat-Shaming, Thin-Shaming, Working Women-Shaming- just Shaming people. The whole shibang.
I recently went out for a nice meal with my boyfriend and a good friend of ours. Over dinner he brought up a photo that he saw online of an obese person on a plane, taking up a lot of space to the extent that the person next to him was in visible discomfort.
Then our friend said, 'see here's the thing, I think fat people should pay more for extra space on a plane because they need it.'
This shocked me at first and my initial reaction was, 'well that's kinda harsh.' And then in reaction to my facial expression, he said 'Let's not beat around the bush, if airlines are conscious of space and weight on a plane and the impact on costs, wouldn't it make sense to charge a larger person for more space?...I'm not having a go at him because he's fat, I'm just saying that as a business, if your ticket price is driven a lot by costs, it probably makes sense.'
Now this is a really delicate line. It made me think that in a way, I agreed with this guy's thinking in that whilst he didn't accept or embrace the dude's size, he wasn't shaming him either. And this is where I feel a lot of folks get it wrong and it leads to a lot of controversy.
This whole Shame- Acceptance or Shame-Embrace tug of war gets quite lost in a lot of stuff I see on telly or on social media. The whole, 'I don't agree with what you're doing, but I'm not going to shame you into changing your behaviour' approach is really overlooked and forgotten.
Granted it doesn't apply to a lot of stuff, horrible illegal stuff or harmful stuff. But lets say weight, religion, lifestyle etc.
Just quit fucking shaming other people to validate the choices you make, if you disagree with it no one is asking you to embrace it, just know what you personally are comfortable with and move on! Let's stop trying to make folks feel bad about themselves!
If I think about the times where I've done something out of shame, like....'I'm not going to eat this because I wanna look like x person,' it's quite sad to think that that decision was because I felt bad about myself.
And yes I know it's not as clear cut as that, there's an argument about celebration and interpretation i.e. it's not my fault if you've taken a perception on that, I'm just happy I lost 3 stone. I guess what I'm getting at is...if you are clearly saying, 'you, I am better than you because of xyz which you are not,' without caveating that by saying, 'but you know on the other hand, this choice I'm making here isn't definitive, it's not the right way necessarily, you are welcome to embrace it or move on etc.' Then that is excluding people, shaming them and isn't very sensitive. Recognise.
