Body Shaming – My thoughts on how we speak about our bodies (Part 1)

“You never know what it is like to walk in someone else’s shoes until you are standing in them.”  This saying, which I first learned when I was a young boy, speaks to empathy, compassion, and acceptance and is generally a good lesson to live by.  But something misleading about the phrase that we must also know is that we can never walk in someone else’s shoes.  Shoes are a metaphor for life, and even those closest to us cannot know what it’s like to be us.  Yet we live in a world where, too often, we judge others based on their appearance whether we know them or not.  Shaming, bullying, and discrimination based on looks are as pervasive as ever.  Social media may be the epicenter of it, but don’t be fooled in thinking it isn’t everywhere else too.