I created this piece to address body image in this new era of social media for both men and women. While social media can be a great place for creating and staying in touch with friends, its constant consumption of, specifically girls', bodies and looks can be extremely harmful to one's self esteem and creates pressure to post pictures that fit the trend of what bodies are 'supposed to look like'. We tend to pick our bodies apart and harshly scrutinize ourselves in comparison to others. Through this, I wanted to address the way we reinforce outdated ideas towards gender roles and unhealthy ideas of how people are expected to behave through keeping old, restricting phrases around that perpetuate stereotypes and ignorance.

 

When I posted this on my social media page it was met with a lot of support; however, I received a lot of scrutiny, to my surprise, from other women. I was readily attacked publicly about my message and had random people agree with accusations about what I do and who I am. While the social divide was shocking to me, it made me realize all of the steps we need to take to have productive and efficient conversations about sensitive topics. Rather than being ready to disagree and label people, we must come from a place of understanding and empathy (which goes for both sides of this situation- don't judge the accuser and don't judge the one accused). Instead of judging people's negativity we need to acknowledge the battle everyone could be fighting and understand where people are coming from rather than disagreeing with what they are saying at face value. I learned that our society has a lot of healing to do, in this case, for the lives of women. The world convinces us that there is only enough space for one woman in a room, but when we realize how much power that takes away from us and try to uplift each other along with ourselves, we make real change. Marginalized communities need time to heal and we must give them that time, especially through understanding and interpreting negativity. In an increasingly sensitive social landscape, rather than complaining about sensitivity we need to start asking ourselves why that is: because of historic radical insensitivity that have cost people too much. And while this may not justify people's behaviour, it sure does help us understand it better in a productive way.