I recently watched this video by the Huffington Post where they talked to Tia Mowry about her recent pregnancy rumors. She posted a picture on Instagram that was a photo of a pregnancy test that said "just fat" to kind of comically debunk the rumors. In the interview she goes on to talk about how it is quite ridiculous how she can't just gain a little weight and be happy without people criticizing her for it. She talks about how we're always constantly putting each other down and looking for things that we can criticize about one another. Not only is it a form of body shaming to constantly be pestering someone about their weight and why they're gaining weight, but it's just plain rude. She talks about how we live in a society that is very structured around criticizing others and prejudices. We have a hard time accepting people for who they are whether it has to do with the way they look, their religion, their sexual orientation, and more.
I think that this video brings up a really good point about how we view each other. There seems to be a lack of love and kindness when it comes to dealing with other people, especially people that we don't know. We can so easily judge someone based on their weight or what they believe without even getting to know them. Pertaining to body shaming, I think that many times, women get the majority of the criticism. Whether it's from men or other women, we are constantly judged on our appearance. Just like Muslims are judged for their religion and the LGBT community judged for their sexual orientation, these things do not define us. We are more than the labels given to us by society and it's time that we stop being put down and judged for them.
Tia brings up the point that we should be working as a society to encourage kindness and openness among each other instead of constant criticism. The way we see and treat others is a good indication of how we see ourselves. I think that this particular topic is very relevant to today because of the promotion to stop body shaming and also the prejudices that we have been seeing recently against the LGBT community, but most recently towards Muslims. Instead of treating people like we should, like human beings, we treat people based on stereotypes and labels. It is definitely time we move past this primitive trend of judgment and prejudice in society.
Video/article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tia-mowry-pregnancy-rumors-body-shaming_56658572e4b08e945feff09c
I feel that being a celebrity, the job itself sort of invites a lot of criticism. Not only of their work, but fans and employees of the media are encouraged to play spectator to the lives of famous people and their personal lives. This viewing/idolizing and reporting of these people tend to sway toward critical and inappropriate. Negative judgments about something as simple as weight, or outfit choice have become a front-page story. A situation were a celebrity speaks against these damaging judgments have become more popular. The rising popularity has and continues shed light on the severity of these instances to the general population, causing a lot of movements by different groups to change the majority mindset. Hopefully some of these changes can take form and end the negativity.
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