I’m sorry in advance for the huge message, which I’ve nearly not posted four times now...
I have been lurking on the LI threads since the series started and, on the whole, I’ve really enjoyed it and the observations. However, I am so disappointed by some of the comments made about people’s appearances and I include in this the totally unnecessary comment made by one poster last night regarding Scarlett Moffatt having piled on weight.
I’m not naive enough to suggest that we don’t all judge by appearance and I totally understand that anybody in the public eye, Love Island contestant or not, has to accept that
there will be vitriolic comments made about them. However, that doesn’t mean they should accept them and I do feel that this type of cruel behaviour should be challenged and called out for what it is.
Even if the person in question doesn’t see the comment, how might it affect those who do? Those who are similarly struggling with their weight, or those who look at the person being criticised and think ‘but I don’t look anywhere near as good as them, so what must people think of ME?’
Me and my friends were typically ‘bitchy’ teenagers and it felt like the only way I knew how to behave was to judge and critique others (nearly always female) on their appearance. My Mum regularly verbalised her negative views on various celebs’ appearances, filled our home with magazines which did the same and circled in red their supposed flaws, whilst she continuously slated and wept about her own looks.
My Mum was never once critical of the way I looked, but it didn’t matter because I knew, whether there were many or few, that there would always be other people saying vile things about my appearance.
This is true of nearly everybody, though some people don’t care, some people are very robust, some people can move on quickly. I couldn’t though. I starved myself to the point of emaciation for years because I so thoroughly despised myself. I used to grab the minuscule bits of fat on my skeletal body and think about slicing them off, while the other girls commented every time I looked even vaguely fatter. I wanted to hurt and punish myself because I absolutely loathed the way I looked and I also loathed the way that I gave such importance about appearance when, deep down, I knew it wasn’t even vaguely important, but I just couldn’t get past it.
It took me years to recover and aged 28, I still feel petrified every time I make a bit of an effort with the way I look because I know that there may well be people looking at me and thinking something like ‘she’s too fat for that’, ‘that dress looks shit’ or ‘her hair doesn’t suit her’. I feel equally petrified when I don’t make effort as I worry that I disgust people, and that they think I’m ugly, even though I know it doesn’t matter and could cope if they said anything.
Despite this, to this day my default is still to start to immediately analyse in my head the way somebody looks when I first see them, and I’ll admit that it’s often the negatives I notice first.
The difference now, however, is that I immediately remind myself of just how much it destroyed the tiny semblance of confidence I had left when somebody told me that my clothes looked shit, or that I was getting fat, or that my tan looked crap, and I stop. I just fucking stop it and I would never, ever say or post what I first thought.
I’m sure some of you will roll your eyes, dismiss the damage it does, or will take the attitude that the world is cruel and that people need to toughen up. That’s fine, we’re all perfectly entitled to form our own views about what is appropriate behaviour or not.
However, I think we all need to take individual responsibility to meaningfully think about what, if anything, we personally get out of it when we’re negative about another person’s looks and whether the damage it could cause is really worth it.