Body Shaming Victim Gone Amok

Sorry, sister. No sale!

phoo by author

Via algorithmic recommendations brought to me by this platform, I happened up on a body-shaming story written by a woman whose plaintive cries I have to confess mostly fell on deaf ears in my case. And it’s not the first time I’ve felt this way about a few other articles I’ve read in the same genre.

Traditionally (if there is a tradition), body shaming was mostly fat-shaming. Which is to say that 99% of it had to do with degrading obese women for being overweight. And I get that this was (and is) unfair as some people are genetically predisposed to being heavy — and aren’t that way from overeating (the general assumption). But the woman whose story I read took body-shaming to a whole new level — and one to which I really can’t relate.

This writer recalled an occasion during which she attended a collegiate cheerleading competition. Sitting behind her were two girls who continued to critique the performances in a catty fashion. And casting aspersions on one of the participants, they offered out loud “Her breasts are too big.”

The girl who wrote the story became incensed at this observation as she herself was sporting 32 GG’s at the time (she later had breast reduction surgery), and went on to lament that she could never be on the gymnastics team back in high school because her…