Body Shaming

Inspired by a photo I saw on Facebook and I used the quote- "Don’t let your mind bully your body" by June Tomaso wood

Your thighs are to wide

Your hips are to round 

Your butt is to small 

Your chest is to flat 

Magazines tells you what’s perfect

Map out the ways you can fix your fatal flaw 

Pinch, scrunch and tuck every part of your skin 

Making sure you know your not thin 

TV. tells you here try this and take that 

Goodness knows you're truly fat 

Here’s a new fad diet 

Seems as though you need to try it

The internet tells you look at her 

See how you are not alike 

You are skinny 

But you’re not skinny enough

We as women find flaws in each other 

 Point out every weakness in other women

Finding anything wrong in someone else

Yet, we know we are not perfect ourselves 

We are told by society “You are imperfect” 

No matter how much you change you will never be “just right”

Not even if you tucked, pinched and scrunched 

Your body will never be right

So we begin to believe we are not picture perfect

Suddenly the mirror shows fat

 Suddenly the scale becomes the monster 

Suddenly meals become the enemy 

We are not born hating our bodies 

We are taught to hate them 

By the magazines, the TV. and the internet 

And scariest of all ourselves 

We define ourselves not anyone else 

We are beautiful and strong

Beauty doesn’t have a weight limit

"Don’t let your mind bully your body"

 

Author's Note

Photo credit: Meg Gaiger/Harpyimages

Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

I think you mean, "too" as opposed to "to" in the first four lines. As for the general content, it's something that needs to be addressed. None of us will ever be perfect, nor can we be, no matter how hard we try. It's not only our bodies that can't be perfect. It's our thoughts, our hopes, our dreams, our ambition...we live in a cesspool of stress...the "stress-pool". We must have an outlet or an out of some kind. We need to relax or as Mick Jagger once wrote, "We're going to blow a fifty amp fuse." We can't always get what we want or be what's expected of us. Can we ever learn to be happy or content? I wish we could but that would never work. One person would just get mad at someone else for being happy. I have no answers and no advice to offer except my wish that somehow we could all feel happy and accepted just the way we are.

[Gray]

I don't think people had such a problem 50 years ago. They lived without internet and media contributing to body image in such a negative way.

[guy drori]

Before I even began to read I was appalled by the image at the beginning. It made a shiver go up my skin - very tragic, and sad, mainly because you see it happening in reality.
Raises up questions, such as "who defines us?" Obviously, nothing is absolute. Things are the way they are in societies because WE made it so. Hence, if for instance we decided that pink is associated with being a feminine color, we can easily change that perception. (Pink by itself is not feminine or masculine.)

"We are not born hating our bodies, we are taught to hate them." That is one of the things I like about babies. They don't care how they look like, and obsession over image arrives when we get older, after the people around us and society already implanted false ideas in my head.

"Don't let your mind bully your body" is a sentence that should be hung on a wide billboard.

Amazing write and I'm glad you shared.

[Beccy]

It's the adman's designer label fantasy world and I both despise and eschew it. Everyone is beautiful, all children are wonderfully behaved, daddy has a great job and a company car and mom is slim as a rake and always smiling as she serves up those properly balanced, nutritional meals in her perfectly pristine designer kitchen.

Truth is, it's a far cry from reality, but the pressure to look, to behave, to dress just so are enormous, particularly on the young.

'Don't let your mind bully your body,' so very true, but also so very hard to accomplish.

You have written a poem that speaks the truth.

Beccy.

[MandaBear]

Thank you Beccy. You are so right. It is so hard with all the pressure. Thank you for the lovely review

[zaisham9393]

I think the most important thing is to eat healthy and exercise.Just stop chasing perfection! I agree with the message you conveyed, and you did that very well.

[MandaBear]

Thank you for the kind review and I totally agree. Eat healthy and exercise.