What is it with body shaming? Is our world so full of material idiocy that we feel it’s okay to make others feel less human simply because of their natural traits? If that’s the case, then we suck.
But there’s hope. Last week, you may have read the story of 2015 Playboy Playmate of the Year Dani Mathers body shaming an unsuspecting woman at an LA Fitness gym in images she posted to Snapchat (below). Sadly, I’d never heard of the model until this despicable incident (and her career is definitely on life support now).
The outcry over the cruel post has been heated and well-deserved. Mathers was banned from all LA Fitness facilities (I’m now a fan of LA Fitness). She also was suspended from her job at the Southern California-based “Heidi and Frank” radio show on KLOS 95.5. She’s reportedly under criminal investigation by the Los Angeles police department for “disseminating private images.” The police are looking for the woman in the photos.
The model apologized but the damage has obviously been done. But perhaps the best part of the whole incident is that it’s brought other women out of the woodwork to defend someone they don’t even know, showing there is hope for humanity after all. And this particularly poignant Facebook post, below, from a Connecticut woman has gone viral. Nicole Henry took a snap of herself in a bikini and came to the defense of the unidentified victim.
“I started thinking about how fat people, like me, get judged solely by our outward appearance, and that really bothered me,” she said. “Yes, my body has rolls, and stretch marks, but my body is so much more than that. This body volunteered in a school in a slum in Africa and built houses with Habitat for Humanity in both the United States and Guatemala. I’m not asking you to think I’m beautiful, or to admire the things I have done. I am asking you to realize that there is more to a person than what their body looks like.”
Boom. Just be who you are. Let others be who they are. And the world can again be a beautiful place.
