They Called Me What?
They Called Me What?
I was keen to write this guest post for Gail when she started her hashtag movement #theycalledmethat. I am so anti-bullying and I think it's great when you can take an "insult" that somebody has thrown at you and throw it right back. However, I will admit that I sat and wrote an entirely different piece to the one you are about to read because whilst writing my original edition I came to realise that the bullies I was writing about didn't deserve the time spent on an article like this. I had to take a different route.
Throughout my life, I've been called many a different names. Probably very similar names to the one's you or the person next to you has been called too. I've been called names by strangers, acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family.
That's when I realised that the most vivid memories of feeling degraded involved those closest to me. For example, I will never forget the time a family member teased me about my weight. I was 13 (the peak age for self-consciousness to arise). I can remember my exact location, by a swimming pool. I was wearing a frilly pink bikini (probably one of my first) and my body was scoffed at by a female family member. You know what? Yeah I was overweight for my height but I was still healthy and still growing but how is a 13 year old supposed to shrug that off? That memory affected me for years, I dropped from a size 12 to a size 8 and still did not believe I was slim enough.
The next collection of memories I have are again including a female family member. Said family member would comment time and time again on how flat-chested I was. Her aim was not to ridicule me but it did leave me never feeling feminine enough and always opting for a padded bra. This was the case up until I had my little girl and finally got those boobs I always wanted. Ironically, before I got used to them, I'd have traded them back in an instant.
Thankfully these voices are only ingrained in my brain as memories and I no longer care for the words that were spoken. However they did play a part in the worst, most awful, harmful and sneering name calling that I've endured. Disgusting. Saggy. Stupid. A Failure.
My own mind has called me much worse than what any human being has. I have physically boaked at the thought of myself and this harsh criticism crept up on me while writing my original piece.
I believe this is mostly due to past experiences mixed with the media and self comparison. All the times I heard somebody "prettier" than me call themselves ugly, all the times magazines portrayed cellulite as an abnormal growth with nobody to tell us otherwise, all the times somebody with better grades called themselves dumb...all of these moments added together encouraged me to think terrible things about myself. Sometimes I still do think some awful things about myself because comparing ourselves negatively to others seems like some sort of human nature. Did you notice that two of the examples that led me to start criticising myself, were people criticising themselves?
If you can stop caring about the names other people have called you then you can stop caring about the names you call yourself. It's all about a change in perspective. We are all guilty of seeing things in a negative light and not even bothering to stop and question our own thoughts.
What even is ugly? Why is being fat or skinny a bad thing? How can being flat-chested mean you're less of a woman? You have a vagina, right? Some people can identify as a woman without a vagina because they want to. Just because somebody has portrayed having small boobs as more "masculine" doesn't mean you have to feel any differently.
So, next time you stand in front of that mirror and your insecurities start to take over, bloody well question them and then kick their ass back to whichever dark part of your brain they came from.
Erin x
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