Hello again and welcome back to Happy Hour. In a couple of days, it's going to be May the 20th. This is a non holiday created purely by consumerism to try to sell things. Around this time, so many marketing campaigns are trying to get us to buy things for our loved ones, family, friends, that special someone. But in today's special episode, I would like to talk to you about a very special someone that really deserves our love. That is yourself.

In the past few years, I've noticed something, usually when I had a new class, I asked students to do self introduction. Tell me something unique about yourself I said, and some of them, including men and women, would say things like, I'm fat, I need to lose weight, even when they don't look overweight at all. Perhaps you can say that they're just being modest, or they're just making a joke. But it does touch upon a very important topic that I would like to share with you today. This is the topic of body image. This is how you see yourself in terms of your physical appearance. Did you ever stop and think about how often were told to change our appearance these days? Media constantly offering tips about how to change, how to lose weight in days, how to hide your imperfections. This is actually one example of body shaming. It's actually not just about your body shape. It's about everything relating to your physical appearance.

So body shaming is criticizing yourself or others because of some aspects of physical appearance. We see it everywhere. And it's highly likely that you and me, we both experienced body shaming as the shamer and the shamed. Some people might say, these are just some harmless comments. I'm just making a joke. Others might say, I'm telling someone he or she is fat or they don't have good skin so that they can take better care of themselves. It's a form of tough love. It's good for them. In today's episode, I would like to share with you the dark side of body shaming and what damage it can do.

And first of all, you could imagine body shaming can lead to a lot of mental issues. It crushes people's self esteem. It makes them see themselves in a very negative light. Hence, people would say, I'm fat, I'm too dark, I have bad skin. I'm too short. And this would also lead to social anxiety. People who have been body shamed too much might find it difficult to enjoy social events, because they fear that they would be shamed again. One of the most common types of body shaming is about weight, especially about women's weight. And this is even more severe in east asian cultures, especially among young women, body shaming can cause a lot of mental issues and among them they are eating disorders. And two of the major eating disorders, the first one is anorexia. People with anorexia generally view themselves as overweight, even if they're dangerously underweight. I've met people with anorexia that are constantly trying to starve themselves, even when they're already below 40 kg, they tend to constantly monitor their weight, avoid eating certain types of food, and severely restrict their calories. There are many devastating physical and mental impacts anorexia can have on human beings. But actually Karen Carpenter, she suffered from anorexia, which was little known at the time. And she died of heart failure directly related to her illness at the age of 32. And this has led to increased awareness of this particular eating disorder.

Another very common eating disorder is bulimia. People with bulimia frequently eat unusually large amounts of food in a specific period of time. And during the binge, they usually feel like they cannot stop eating or control how much they're eating. After the binge, they usually would attempt to purge. One of the famous people that used to suffer from bulimia due to extreme stress was princess Diana. Outside of eating disorder, body shaming might also lead to body dismorphic disorder. It sounds very technical. This is a mental health disorder in which you cannot stop thinking about one or more perceived problems with your appearance, a flaw that appears in mirror or cannot be seen by others. For example, even when everyone thinks that you are normal weight, you still think you're extremely fat or constantly feeling, like your nose is too big, and becoming obsessed with your nose. When you have body dismorphic disorder, you intensely focus on your appearance and body image, repeatedly checking the mirror, grooming or seeking reassurance, sometimes for many hours each day. I know in cases that people would spend over five, six hours a day checking themselves in the mirror, checking their weight and feeling completely distressed. When it's really serious, it's going to impact your ability to function in your daily life. Or you may seek out plastic surgeries to try to fix your problem.

Apart from mental health issues, body shameing also has a lot of social impact. For example, it sets unrealistic expectations for people. It makes us overly focused on physical appearance. And it also helps build amiss association between appearance and negative characteristics. For example, if you don't have the perfect skin, then you're not taking good care of yourself, then you're not a woman enough. Or if you're overweight, that must mean you're lazy on disciplines. After talking about all these problems about body shameing, why is it so difficult to stop it? First of all, the widespread media influence, when all your waking moments are dominated by media and social media telling you what is beautiful, telling you what is perfect, especially with social media chasing traffic and businesses use aggressive marketing to sell things. Of course we're bombarded by these messages telling us we need to buy products to change ourselves so that we can be better, we can be prettier, and it’s very difficult for anyone to escape that kind of influence. The second reason is the anonymity online. Nobody knows who you are online. This is where body shameing happens a lot. We find it so easy to call someone ugly fat online, because we know we don't have to be responsible for what we say. And a third of course is the technology. The ever developing technology makes it so easy to photoshop pictures, to retouch pictures, to use filters to create that perfect look that simply does not exist in real life. And we use that unrealistic perfection as the role model to shame others and to shame ourselves. The last one is the increasing stress in day to day life, that makes it necessary sometimes for us to feel superior, to make fun of others, to feel better than them. But sometimes that is only because we don't truly like ourselves. We don't like how we look. Case in point. Many people who body shame others don't really like their own bodies that much. Having said all that I know some people might say, but people need discipline, people need to strive to be better. That's not what I was saying at all. It's great if you take care of yourself. If you strive to be better to stay healthy. And you are right, there are many bad lifestyle choices that will lead to some physical issues, but that has nothing to do with body shameing. It is not tough love when you try to body shame others because when you start to shame them, you don't care at all about their health. You’re shameing them to make yourself feel better. Not really looking out for their benefits. And when you're shameing yourself, well, that usually means you're feeling stress, not just about how you look, but generally about your life. It's just so easy to blame your body to blame your physical appearance for your frustration and anxiety in life. James Corden,in his late night talk show, commented on fat shameing. Fat shaming 是 body shaming的一种. And James Corden said fat shaming is not encouragement or tough love. It's just bullying and verbal abuse.

At the end of today's program, I just want to have a little bit of heart to heart with you. I've chosen this topic because I can truly relate to this for my entire adult life till this point, I've struggled so much with body image. I've struggled with eating disorders and body dismorphic disorder. And there were times that I just couldn't really recognize myself in the mirror because I hated that reflection so so much. During the very bad days, I used to weigh myself over a hundred times and spend five hours crying on the scale. And I've tried very hard to cope with it. And I'm still trying. And here I'm sharing this episode and part of my life story with you. So hopefully that can not only help increase awareness of the issue, but also maybe speak to some of you who have been struggling yourselves to know that you're not alone in this, that many people might be feeling exactly the same. And don't most of us just wanna be seen and appreciated instead of criticized and picked apart? There are many ways to improve your health, to live a healthier life, to make healthier choices, but body shameing is not one of them. And the most important thing is to accept yourself, to start loving yourself and to tell yourself I am enough. If you like today's episode, I would love it if you're willing to share your experiences, because the words you share and the experiences you share might be a lot more powerful than you think. On that note,let's end today's episode. And don't forget to love that special someone, that is yourself. I'll see you next time. Bye~

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