Everyone has been body-shamed at one point in their lives, and you can times that by a thousand if you are a woman or not white. Or both, like me. So fun! But the things we are body-shamed about are often innocuous and stem from the insecurities of the person insulting us, not from any real flaws in our own looks. I mean, do beauty standards even make sense?
So, to remind you that all bodies are unique and that there’s no one way to be, we collected some of the most outrageous, totally nonsensical things people have been actually body-shamed for in their lives. Because it’s important to remember that none of these beauty standards are real. So let’s expose them for how ridiculous they truly are, shall we?
Soaliha (that’s me), 24
“My own sister, who had a straight-bridged anglo nose that very much works in today’s beauty standards, told me: ‘Your nose is so weird. The point slopes down so it looks like it’s falling off ur face’.” Pour one out for girls like me who were personally victimised by their body-shaming older sisters!
Isabella, 24
“Once a girl at work told me I had fat leg bones but a skinny rib cage.”
Emily, 21
“‘Your eyes are too close together.’ Then he proceeded to pull out a ruler to prove it to me.”
Pema, 26
“I once got told my toes were ‘too even’.”
Bianca, 24
“So we had to kneel down to measure the length of our skirts in homeroom once a week in high school (it was to make sure they covered our knees). When I went to do it one day, my teacher said ‘there’s no point in you doing it because I can’t even tell where your knees are any way, they’re so not defined’.
“Also, a kid I played soccer with told me I had ‘fat thighs like a kangaroo’.”
Spoiler alert: we are going to see way more stories about knees because for some reason people are obsessed with insulting them!
Decades after hearing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, I still marvel at how weirdly specific, beautiful + brutal those insults are.
If someone told me “you’ve got garlic in your soul” it would wreck me for years.
That’s the kind of thing that makes people finally go to therapy.— Ben Bowlin (@BenBowlinHSW) May 18, 2021
Josephine, 36
“A guy at my high school (in Newcastle, surfer girl tans were in) once told me I had a pale scalp.
“That’s when I was like ‘That’s me done, I literally cannot please everyone’. Quite a liberating moment for a 16-year-old.”
Charlotte, 24
“’Are you not embarrassed that your nose is so upturned that people can see right up your nostrils?’ while looking up them like [the thinking emoji].”
Linley, 24
“Someone once asked me if the reason I often dislocate my shoulders is because I have big boobs. I’m still trying to figure out what she meant.”
Aleks, 28
“My close male friend in high school told me in full sincerity I was a ‘5’.”
Sam, 33
“‘Your knees look like cookies’.”
Okay, just an FYI, I got so many stories about knees that I actually couldn’t include them all. Fat knees, skinny knees, knobbly knees, thick knees, COOKIE KNEES (???). So for those of you who feel insecure about your knees, please don’t — I assure you there is no perfect knee or even one universal standard of how they should look.
Veera, 25
“‘You have a long torso.’ ???”
Akira, 36
“‘You have a short, fat neck.” From a tumour removal surgeon, lol.
“I also once had my leg called a Christmas ham.”
Anita, 43
“When you smile you look like ET.”
Okay, this one in particular would get me arrested. There is something so nasty about criticising people’s smiles. That is literally how they naturally behave when happy. Fuck you if you shame people for their body’s expression of joy!
Michael, 24
“Someone said I have horse teeth when I laugh YEARS ago and I still remember it.”
Shae, 30
“‘Ew, your toes are so hairy!’ And now I never forget to shave my toes every day.
Kelly, 27
“My boyfriend in high school pointed to my stretch marks and asked if they were dog scratches.”
Adeel, 23
“‘Your toes are TOO even and small.”
Okay, another person body-shamed about even toes??
Leo, 28
“A male friend knelt down in front of me to get a better look at my ‘weird knees’.”
Elle, 24
“When I was 16 I was told I had large birthing hips.”
Amelia, 29
“Your chin is too strong.”
Mary, 55
“‘Those legs would look good on a billiard table’. I was 25 at the time.”
I looked up billiard tables after reading this insult and I still have no idea what it means. They all have different legs! This is incomprehensible!
Well there ya have it, folks.
People will find literally the most random thing about you to body-shame, because it’s not actually about you, it’s about them. And really, about a broader culture of shaming that keeps us insecure because that’s actually profitable for quite a few industries.
Keep that in mind and remember that nothing is real except you and how beautiful you are. xoxo
