Am I Being a Hypocrite?

Jophen Lama

Social media today has become a platform for people to put out their thoughts, views, opinions, and freely support what they prefer. If you ever bump into my social media handles, you’ll find my posts ranting about social issues, most of which are related to gender. One of the issues that concern me the most is the beauty standards set for every one of us but in a higher-pressure way for girls. A girl, starting at the age of 13, has to worry about her physical appearances so that she looks presentable in the society when she already has her schooling, career and whole life to worry about. That is why I also use social media as a medium to relay messages to my fellow female users that all of us are simply beautiful because beauty was never supposed to be defined by the way one looks. I scream out that we as humans have the responsibility to be kind, loving and compassionate rather than worrying about our physicality.

Just as I had all these principles of my life in my mind, I came across a post about an incident in India that went viral. A judgmental woman who saw a girl wearing shorts argued that she should be raped. She also asked the guys nearby to rape the girl and her friends when her friends tried to defend her. Later on the girls publicly confronted her and bashed her for slut shaming. Another woman joined them and during the confrontation, she said that the girl has a body to flaunt, but asked whether the judgmental woman hid her body in long dresses because it wasn’t worth flaunting. The irony in this incident is how the woman supports body shaming while speaking against slut shaming. The hypocrisy I saw led me to reflect on my own activity.

I always wanted girls to love their bodies and not be distracted by the beauty standards of our society. However, I began to think whether I was applying it to myself. I have subconsciously been insecure about my body since middle school. In addition to my insecurity, I recently started working out because I was tired of feeling insecure. This got me thinking how I’m advocating for loving one’s body and not doing it myself. I also tried to defend my actions by saying I’m working out to stay healthy, but the truth is I want to get that lean body and get over my insecurities. Then a question struck my mind, ‘Am I being a hypocrite?’

This shows how deeply these issues related to gender, race, or any other social element are rooted in our society because their ideas somehow get into our heads even though we try to escape them. However, we should never stop trying to boycott these social issues despite stumbling in to a little hypocrisy while we’re on our way. After all, we’re all humans and it is our nature to make mistakes.