Body shaming is the act of saying something negative about a person's body. It can be about your own body or someone else's. The commentary can be about a person's size, age, hair, clothes, food, hair, or level of perceived attractiveness. Body shaming can lead to mental health issues including eating disorders, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and body dysmorphia, as well as the general feeling of hating one's body.
In our current society, many people think that thin bodies are inherently better and healthier than larger bodies. Historically, however, that hasn't always been the case. If you think of paintings and portraits from before the 1800s era, you can see that plumpness was revered. Being fat was a sign that a person was wealthy and had access to food, while thinness represented poverty. In her book "Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture," author Amy Erdman Farrell traces the shift from revering heavy bodies to the preference of smaller shapes to mid-nineteenth century England when the first diets books were published. She noted that the focus on diets, and bodies at large, was centered around women. Author Sabrina Strings says that fatphobia resulted from colonialism and race in her book "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. “According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first known use of the term "body shaming" was by journalist Philip Ellis