Is body shaming violence? What is its impact on children?

As children, we are born with an unshakable belief that the body is something wonderful. It allows us to perform various activities, it makes funny sounds. Learning about it and using it provides a lot of pleasure. What is needed for development is support in the child's sense of agency, competence, and decision-making. On the other hand, what negatively affects their development is ridicule, shaming due to their behavior or body, insults, including inducing a sense of shame due to the appearance of individual body parts. These are actions that ruin a young person's self-esteem. Each of us learns about our body through how it was treated by our loved ones - absolutely not only through the images of figures presented to us on the Internet.

The need for connection and our thoughts about ourselves

The basic need of every person is connection. It is through it that we develop as people. This need is so strong that even if the family does not provide a child with safety - due to violence or abuse - it still binds with the parents/guardians. The type of connection influences the way we experience life - making friends and entering into relationships, dealing with emotions, understanding ourselves and others, but also how we perceive our bodies and appearance.

The bond serves to build trust and to shape our sense of security in the world. And because as children we have no other option than to believe our parents/guardians about practically everything they say about us and about ourselves, we also trust them with our contact with our own bodies. From a very young age we learn to think of ourselves in the way we were thought of and experienced in our family homes.

Shaming or ridiculing someone in childhood, even if the goal is to make "innocent" jokes, can negatively affect not only the way a child thinks about their body. The effects can also be seen in their general thinking about themselves, their sense of worth.

Body shaming in general

Body shaming, or humiliating, shaming or ridiculing someone because of how they look, is quite common. Statistics from the British mental health organization Mental Health Foundation ( https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/body-image-report/exec-summary ) show that one in five adults have felt embarrassed about their appearance in the past year. Negative comments about their appearance are heard by all people, regardless of gender.

Studies clearly show that such experiences in childhood and adolescence can contribute to the occurrence of depression or even suicidal thoughts. Interestingly, body shaming is most often discussed in the context of the image of bodies on the Internet. It is Instagram or perfect photos of celebrities that are accused of evoking negative thoughts in their recipients about their own bodies. And this is indeed the case. Importantly, however, social media is not the only source of body shaming. Many of them start earlier - in the family.

Body shaming in the family

It turns out that the first negative statements about appearance, aimed at humiliating, embarrassing or ridiculing, can be heard from a parent. Fears that a child will be fat or unattractive cause such comments to appear from the earliest years of a child's life.

This can later contribute to eating disorders, for example. Parents in good faith address the issue of what can and cannot be eaten, pay attention to weight and figure, emphasizing the importance of this issue in the context of health. But paradoxically, they contribute to the connotation of negative beliefs about the body, food and food choices in the child. The issue of "just not gaining weight" becomes crucial during puberty, although at this time the gain of fat tissue results from the development of the body, and an appropriate caloric supply is necessary for the development of the nervous system! Therefore, the phenomenon of body shaming is an additional risky factor hindering healthy and safe development.

Family eating style

Besides, the nutrition of infants, and later small and older children, is the subject of endless discussions and worries in many families. At first, everyone is stressed about whether the child will definitely eat, whether the meals are nutritious enough, whether they contain the right ingredients. Then, in the preschool period, at the stage of selective eating, fears appear whether the child is not eating too little, whether to let him eat nothing but dry bread for the whole week, or whether it is necessary to seek medical advice.

The topic of food can activate the need to decide for the child and control how much they should eat and at what intervals. You might think: "What's wrong with that? After all, the parent is responsible for the child's health." However, this is a path to nowhere. The child needs to develop trust in their own body and the ability to read its physiology. This development can be a kind of torment for the parent, because it turns out that they have to give up some control and only agree to gentle observation and accompanying the child in decisions. However, it is thanks to this that the child will develop the ability to read their body and needs, as well as understand themselves, be decisive and feel that they are an agent.

Trust in your own body

At the same time, this is the first moment in a person's life when messages judging their eating habits may appear in their environment. Forcing them to eat, shaming them or making fun of them for not eating in a way that is consistent with the parent's vision contribute to a decrease in self-confidence. And while a preschooler will not necessarily show that this has any effect on them at a given moment, during adolescence and then adulthood, they may base their beliefs about themselves on these experiences from the beginning of life.

If the parent already did not trust the child and his or her choices, and made negative comments about them, how could the child develop trust in himself or herself?

Uncle the joker, aunt the funny one

In many families, there are people who freely express their opinions about others. They comment on their general appearance, weight, the way they dress, and anything else that comes to mind. Of course, they usually judge children or teenagers in this way. Very often, the position of people who do this is so unwavering that few people are able to draw the line and say, "Hey, don't talk to me like that."

Of course, ridiculing someone or any comments aimed at humiliating another person are examples of body shaming, although very often such an uncle or aunt does not do it on purpose. They will respond to any accusations that they do not have bad intentions, they want to help; they will assure that a slim figure or a "nice" hair color are important. In short: that these are not actions aimed at actual humiliation or ridicule.

However, the lack of a consciously named intention does not mean that commenting on a belly roll, shaming any "imperfections" or judging one's appearance cease to be what they are. Namely, body shaming.

“What a beautiful girl!”

It is worth remembering that excessive focus on a child's appearance kills agency and decision-making. And these are extremely important features that build a young person's sense of self-worth. In Poland, the most common message to girls is still: "You're beautiful!", which is the other side of the body shaming coin. Everything a girl does and how she dresses is commented on as beautiful .

It is important for a child to hear from the people with whom they build a bond that they are beautiful – regardless of their gender, and regardless of what they are wearing or what they are doing. Simply put: that as a person they are beautiful. However, overusing this message to the exclusion of all others excessively redirects the child's attention to appearance. And to a specific appearance. Kasia Urbaniak, the author of the book Unbound about female power, who lives in the States, points out that as a society we are obsessed with how girls look and what boys do. And indeed: we describe the actions or behaviors of girls as beautiful – that is, we evaluate their appearance, thereby emphasizing passivity. In turn, we tell boys that they did something in an exceptional way – that is, we evaluate their action, emphasizing their activity.

This translates into the susceptibility of these people to criticism of their own bodies, or body shaming. It does not matter whether they are obese or slim. In fact, the actual figure does not matter at all – mocking someone because of their appearance can happen to anyone. Specific words also do not matter – the moment the body becomes the subject of evaluation or a dispute about what it should be like to be valuable, this dispute automatically becomes body shaming.

Violence

It is important to note that body shaming is violence. Negatively judging a person's appearance when they have not asked for any such comment is crossing the line and is violent in nature. It may seem that making fun of adults is not that serious. However, anyone verbally attacked in this way can experience negative psychological or emotional effects, which is why it is something that should not be done.

It may seem that paying attention to external features is an innocent, harmless behavior. After all, beauty is something “good,” “harmless.” And yet, constantly focusing on it, especially when no one is asking for such focus, ceases to be innocent, good, or harmless. It doesn’t matter whether it happens on Instagram, anywhere on the Internet, or in the non-digital world.

How to help yourself?

Remember that you are a person who experiences the negative effects of body shaming. Although the body seems to be a battlefield between trying to look at yourself gently and attacks on it, you can always fight for your own tenderness. First of all, take a look at what images of women or people in general (for example on Instagram) trigger a return of negative thoughts about yourself, and stop following them for a while. Try to build your social media feed in such a way that you surround yourself with photos that do not have a destructive effect on you.

Also realize that making fun of someone for the appearance of their body – whatever that body looks like and regardless of the gender of the person it belongs to – is unacceptable and unacceptable. Each of us is our own body and can change it however we want. Above all, it is worth learning and remembering that at different stages of life it can take on different forms. And that is okay. Simply okay. It does not matter whether you are lying in a bikini on the beach or walking in a tracksuit for buns.

You belong to your body and your body belongs to you.