The Weight of Words: The Relationship between Body Shaming Experiences on Self-

esteem among Senior Year Women in CASS-CLSU

Introduction

Have you recently scrutinized your body in the mirror? We frequently feel self-conscious

about our body size, shape, and weight, even though we may not be aware of it. We frequently

tell ourselves that we are too fair or too dark, curly or straight, or too thin or too obese.

Receiving unfavorable remarks about your appearance might affect how you feel about

your body and cause anxiety, embarrassment, and self-consciousness. However, there are

strategies for handling unfavorable remarks and achieving body acceptance. One of the first

aspects of a person that others notice is their physical appearance, which has a significant

influence on social relationships. In modern Western civilizations, concepts of appearance in

general and body image in particular have taken on significant importance (Tiggeman, 2011).

Body image is a reflection of attitudes and social interactions as well as a cognitive construct. In

western culture, as well as throughout the world, there is a cultural stereotype that links physical

appearance with good character traits. Because of the deluge of images of flawless bodies in

mainstream media, advertising, and social media, people are conditioned to believe that "what is

beautiful is good," with physical appearance frequently being associated with success.

Beauty is an important concept on how we see ourselves and other people. The general

concept of beauty is anything that pleases the eye. Mitchell (2015) stated that people might feel

that being beautiful helps them to achieve other objectives, such as getting notice and a feeling of
belongingness. On the other hand, constant worries about beauty cause anxiety and

psychological distress beyond cosmetics' cost.

Attractiveness is indeed the most noticeable issue for women. According to Fallon et al.,

(2014); Grogan (2016), women report body dissatisfaction at higher rates than men and mostly,

women experience significant pressure to look beautiful and attractive (Stuart & Donaghue,

2011). Preoccupation with their appearance or appearance investment is common and greater for

women than men (Cash & Labarge, 2011). Appearance investment also associated with body

dissatisfaction, more frequent negative affect in related to their appearance, and more

internalization of societal beauty standards.

Self-esteem and body image have a direct impact on one another as well as on a person's

feelings, ideas, and behaviors. Poor body image makes it difficult for young people to feel good

about their entire selves if they don't like their physique or a particular area of it (positive self-

esteem).

Body shaming can be done by your parents, siblings, friends, or even strangers, and it can

be done in person or remotely via the internet and social media.

Remarks regarding what you eat or how much food you consume, even in jest, are

considered body shaming. Whether on purpose or not, offering someone dietary advice or

praising weight loss is also regarded as body shaming. Even if your friends and family members

frequently don't mean to offend you, their remarks can nonetheless be harsh. They can be

unaware of the detrimental impact that inquiries like "Have you lost weight? ", "Are you sure

you need to consume all of that? "May have."

 Nobody is immune from cultural pressures to look a certain way, but in any situation,

comments about your body are unnecessary. Whether you're the one body shaming yourself or

someone else, there are solutions available. You may cultivate body positivity and learn to view

yourself with more empathy and candor.

Review of Related Literature

The widespread body dissatisfaction is associated to be the cause of pressure to look

attractive (Tiggemann, 2011), which in consequences turn associated with eating disorders

(Brechan & Kvalem, 2015), depression, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.

Women’s discontent with or concern about their weight, as well as the causes of these

worries, have been the subject of much research (e.g., Brechan & Kvalem, 2015; Rodin,

Silberstein, & Striegel-Moore, 1984; Samman, Fayet, & Petocz, 2012; Slevec & Tiggemann,

2011). Other than weight, there are many other physical characteristics that influence

attractiveness. For instance, large eyes, tiny noses, small chins, and large lips (Thornhill &

Gangestad, 1999) are all widely regarded as attractive in female faces (Cunningham, 1986;

Furnham & Reeves, 2006).

Much research does indeed suggest that lot of women have appearance anxieties

unrelated to weight, including acne (Gupta & Gupta, 2013; Hanstock & O'Mahony, 2002), facial

appearance (Jackson & Chen, 2007; Warren, 2014), and aging (Becker, Diedrichs, Jankowski,

Werchan, 2013; Bolonga, 1993).

Many studies have concentrated on how the media propagates social beauty norms, or the

culturally—and increasingly, globally—dominant beauty schema (Sarkar, 2014; Yan & Bissell,

2014). Women may make social comparisons with media personalities in which they judge their
own attractiveness based on parallels to media representations (Myers & Crowther, 2009) A

rising corpus of research has coined the terms “lookism” or “beautyism” to describe prejudice,

stereotyping, and discrimination based on physical attractiveness (Sims, 2017; Saiki, Adomaitis,

& Gundlach, 2017). One of these aspects is widely defining beauty, which is how beautyism is

typically understood to confer privilege on more attractive people (Rhodes, 2010). According to

Tylka and Wood-Barcalow (2015c), people who have a broad conception of beauty find a variety

of physical characteristics attractive, whether they are mostly immutable (such body shape or

weight) or more easily changing (e.g., personal style). When defining beauty, those who have a

broad conception of the term also frequently refer to internal qualities like self-assurance and

acceptance of oneself. Furthermore, widely defining beauty encompasses not only appreciating

beauty in others but also in one’s own traits, even if those features don’t necessarily conform to

conventional norms of beauty.

In today’s society, women are frequently reminding of what was deemed attractive.

Women of all ages, shapes, and sizes are targets by thousands of advertisements that promotes

elusively attractive ideal. Society has created unattainable standards of beauty through the usage

of photo-shopped and computer-enhanced models in commercials, which has caused feelings of

inadequacy in female consumers. According to the study of Britton (2012) numerous factors,

including peer pressure, inborn insecurities, and beauty commercials, might contribute to a

woman's anxiousness. Overall, it has been discovering that the beauty business harms women's

self-esteem, body image, and sense of beauty. By using ascending comparisons, women are

constantly going to compare themselves to beauty standards that society shows to them.

What is body shaming?

 According to the Mindshift Wellness Center, body shaming is an act of making fun of or

insulting someone due to their looks is known as body shaming. Shaming somebody for their

size, shape, skin tone, hair color, body hair, and overall look is included in its broad range. It is

degrading someone by using unflattering or disparaging remarks about their appearance.

Negative remarks may be made about you if you're underweight or in regard to a particular body

area, in addition to "fat shaming."

You can criticize yourself or other people in this way. You might be hard on yourself and

feel self-conscious about your weight or how your body appears. Even worse, you can say things

to yourself like, "I feel so fat today," or "I need to quit stuffing my face with food."

What is slef-esteem?

Self-esteem is a psychological feature that is well recognized, extensively researched, and

defined by Branden (1994) as a person's conviction that they are deserving of joy and capable of

managing daily challenges. The level of one's self-esteem can be assessed positively or

negatively by contrasting it with that of others (Reilly, Rochlen, & Awad, 2014). According to

Branden (1994), maintaining positive, fruitful aspects of life, such as interpersonal connections,

employment, and education, requires that people have a healthy sense of self-worth. Positive

traits including kindness, compassion, adaptability, and resilience are all correlated with having

high self-esteem (Branden, 1994).

Self-esteem is a term used to describe one's perception of one's own value, viability, and

sufficiency (as cited in Gilbert & Procter, 2006). According to Gilbert and Procter (2006), having

low self-esteem makes a person more susceptible to having unpleasant emotional circumstances

like shame. According to Wells, Glickauf-Hughes, and Jones (1999), flaws and defects resulting
from experiences of shame that reflect poor self-esteem are associated with high levels of shame

and low self-esteem. Low self-esteem has been linked to detrimental mental illnesses including

depression (Johnson & O'Brien, 2013), hence this linkage is crucial. Self-esteem rises during a

person's early and middle adult years, peaks at age 60 to 65, and then declines as they get older

(Orth, Trzesniewski, & Robins, 2010).

Shame and Self-Esteem

Shame is a negative feeling that involves self-reflection and concentration. When shame

is viewed as an unpleasant emotion, it may have the capacity to cause self-destructive behavior

(Fortes & Ferreira, 2015). Shame causes people to feel less valuable than they are, which can

impair self-esteem. A trait of shame may eventually develop through the repeated sense of

shame. Trait shame, on the other hand, entails severe, often devastating negative emotions such

as inadequacy, despair, helplessness, and a desire to cover up personal faults. Therefore, it is

reasonable to believe that experiencing shame is directly tied to changes in self-esteem.

Furthermore, having poor self-esteem makes a person more susceptible to experiencing negative

emotions like shame.

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https://www.mindshiftwellnesscenter.com/the-weight-of-words-effects-of-body-shaming-on-

mental-health/

https://www.parentinginottawa.ca/en/youth/Body-Image-and-Self-esteem-in-Youth.aspx