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Body image among children takes a beating when parents stress that only some kinds of bodies are acceptable - The #CanWeTalkAboutThis campaign
Guest Post By Uttama, Founder & Editor of South Asian Parent
You know you’ve said it. Out loud, in public, and in front of your children.
In fact, we all say the F-word over and over again without realizing it.
It’s more than just the word ‘fat’ however; these obscenities hide in our everyday conversations, affecting the way children develop the standards by which they judge themselves, and each other.
“She’d be so much prettier if she wasn’t fat.”
“He’s too dark.”
“She’s too thin; she looks sick.”
“He’s so fat.”
As a society and a community, we are obsessed with our looks. We fixate on outer appearance to the cost of inner contentment. In an extreme form, the implications clearly show in the increasing number of people affected by eating disorders.
But even in its mildest form, if we are not careful of the words we use around our children, we are raising a generation of people fixated on fitting into a socially-acceptable body size—lacking the security needed to be confident in their own skin, no matter how light or dark.
#CanWeTalkAboutThis releases this poster to show that the words we throw around so easily in day-to-day conversations have ‘weight’. They fall heavily on young ears and sink to the bottom of their spirits, spilling into so many aspects of their self-esteem.
We’d like to ask:
Is it sensible to believe, and to teach, that only one body form is attractive? Should we be talking about how people come in all shapes and sizes? Has our surface appearance become too important for us to shift focus inwards? Would it be beneficial to develop healthy eating and living instead? Can we change our F-word from fat to fit? If we want our children to give greater importance to inner character, don’t we have to demonstrate how to do that by our own actions first? Can we let go of thinking ‘fat’?
We want to know what you think. Add your voice to the #CanWeTalkAboutThis campaign here.
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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