Shaming??......

the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another:

susceptibility to this feeling:

a fact or circumstance bringing disgrace or regret:

These are all meanings of the word Shaming, it seems on multi-media such as Facebook and others this topic has come to the foreground. I find it interesting reading some of the posts about "shaming". If you google "weight shaming" there are a large number of images that show up right in-front of your eyes. The scary part it is from all aspects of body image, from over weight, under weight, pregnant, fit and muscular body types, and really what have we all become. 

I can admit I quietly feel sad for people who are obese and to the point that you know that their joints and organs are under so much pressure from the extra weight that they carry, but also I have become so aware of people who are also extremely underweight and want them to understand what they do to their bodies is really no different to those who are emotional eaters and are over weight. Then there are the gym goers that have the ripped six pack, and large amounts of muscle, also there are the fitness models that compete. I have to say here is another part of the spectrum of bodies that go from weight gain through their off season, to pushing the body to extremes to build muscle and then the restriction of calorie intake when building to a competition and then the dehydrating to make the muscles look more defined. In all these aspects people put their bodies under large amounts of stress in many different ways. I will be the first to say that I have done it as well.  I have family that has done it, I have acquaintances that do it as well. In some aspect I guess we all do it, we try to loose the kilo's (pounds), we try to gain the muscle, we try to gain the weight to stay alive, and so on...

So what do we accomplish by shaming others? Is it a positive thing? Does it hurt peoples feelings? Are we becoming such a judgmental society that we are so transfixed on the "perfect" look. Are we so fixated on what the "perfect" body is. Where is the grey area of this whole situation? Is it that we should be looking for a balance in our lives. A happy medium where we are happy with who we are and not what society thinks we should be. Now here is the double edge sword...health professionals can tell you how to loose weight and put you on medication to help, also advise you to reduce the calories and up the exercise. The question I ask is do they get to the bottom of why their patients are over weight? Now this is the same with under weight patients, underweight people can look "healthy" and still be anorexic/bulimic  (I have had a personal experience with a general practitioner/Doctor who had no idea I was anorexic because he thought I had good muscle tone), again patients can be medicated to help with the emotional situation and also be hospitalised when critical. Both issues are as dangerous as each other. I feel that there needs to be more effort put into the reasons why people over eat and restrict, and maybe there could be a start to society understanding why this happens. Its a learnt practice. Is it all around controlling parts of our lives that we feel that are out of control? So where do we go from here??

which picture is better?

Why can't we as a society be more realistic, we are not all going to be barbie dolls, and models, whom definitely aren't always like it either without surgical help (my opinion). How about letting go of the external factors and lets look at internal health. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other medical issues that are more of a priority to deal with for those of all sizes.


I don't expect anyone to have the same opinion as me, but I just felt compelled to put my thoughts into words here.

Hope everyone is having a good week.

Hayley xx