I could live in a cave, is that hermit-shaming?
IF YOU think fat-shaming is a disgrace, then say hello to a relative newcomer on the body-shaming block, another loathsome form of insult that chips away at the confidence of the physically selfconscious, often causing a lifetime of mental health issues. It’s called skinny-shaming and Oliver Callan highlighted it on the Ryan Tubridy show through a range of letters from skinny-malinks complaining about being humiliated for their slender pinch-not-aninch frames by everyone from nurses in Covid vaccination centres to waitresses doubting they ever ate a cream bun in their lives.
Talk about a wake-up call. It seems that those of us who are desperately trying to shift the Covid stone and who compliment those who haven’t gained an ounce during the pandemic are running the risk of crushing their self-esteem by skinny shaming.
Now call me a wagon but my sympathy is in short supply. I just wish I was thin enough to qualify for such vicious taunts.
Storm Keating may cry a river about being trolled for her size-zero figure but if I was her, I’d assume the trolls were just jealous of my skeletal proportions and I’d let their nasty comments wash right over my bikini body.
GRANTED social media seems to be a poisonous place, the comments so cruel and unrelenting they can turn normally well-balanced people into perpetual victims. But the effect seems to have spilled into real life, where thoughtless remarks or glib questions are no longer just swept away and ignored but allowed to fester causing injured feelings and running sores.
Kathryn Thomas is the latest to add to the ever-growing list of dos and don’ts of acceptable discourse.
She says that asking mothers if they are going to have a second child should now be out of bounds, given the prevalence of fertility problems.
I have to admit that is another area where I must hang my head and say that I have probably asked that invasive
question a zillion times. In my defence it was probably during a tedious monologue about baby’s dining habits and just a desperate attempt to change the subject.
But while Kathryn wants that uncomfortable question off the menu, she’s all for chatting about miscarriage and menopause because they normalise natural processes. This seems completely paradoxical to me. Not to mention ill-advised. Ask an angry red-faced woman in middle age how her menopause is going? I don’t think so somehow.
The rules of engagement in polite society meant that up to now at least, most of us try to be pleasant and amusing company, even though there are
always the annoying few who delight in ruffling feathers.
BUT social interaction is now such a minefield that the most inoffensive people can be accused of inadvertently putting their foot in it and we need inane platitudes like #BeKind to guide our behaviour.
Talk about how you rear your children, and you can be guilty of mum-shaming or dad-shaming. There’s job-shaming and slut-shaming. The web of outrage goes on and on. It’s part of a culture that is more interested in victimhood than in building resilience.
It’s impossible to rub along in society without causing some level of distress or discomfort. The only alternative is to live in a cave and become a victim of hermit-shaming.