I used to be a chubby kid, and for those of you who don’t know, being chubby in an Asian country is a criminal offence that guarantees shame for yourself and your family. I grew up listening to body-shaming remarks from relatives left and right. Everyone — from my grandparents to my mother’s friend whom I’ve met exactly once — seemed personally responsible for reminding me that my body occupied too much space.
“Oh child, let’s cut down some rice, or you’ll scare away the boys”
“Looks who’s preparing for a Sumo match!”
“Wear a blue shirt, and you’ll become Doraemon”
Were some of them funny as hell? Yes. But it does not negate the fact that they hurt me deeply. Whenever I tried to speak up for myself, the adults would laugh and say:
“But it’s for your own good. We’re just motivating you.”
Even though I knew deep down that they were wrong, another part of me wondered if there might be some truth in it. Shame, after all, is such an effective social incentive to drive change. Right? It has changed social norms, pushed smokers to quit, convinced people to wear seatbelts, and transformed behaviours that society once accepted into ones it could no longer tolerate.
Maybe shame really was an effective push. And so, even though I hated the way they made me feel, I inherited their method of motivation. I learned to criticise myself.
I thought if I could hate myself enough, I might grow into a version of me that I can finally love.
If I hate my body enough, I’ll work for a better one.
If I’m harsh with myself enough, I’ll be more disciplined.
If I constantly remind myself that I’m not good enough, I’ll always work harder.
I started to become my own worst critic, and somehow, I felt twistedly empowered — no one can hurt me if I hurt myself first; no word can attack me by surprise if I already recite it to myself a thousand times; if I were to hurt, it would be by my own blade.
But in the end, it is still just an illusion of control; whether the blade belonged to someone else or to me, the wound was still mine.
I managed to lose weight before I entered high school.
And it was shame that drove me to run 45 minutes, skip rope 100 times, and do 50 crunches every single day. It was shame that fueled me to restrict my eating habits and become more conscious of the food I put inside my body. It was shame that transformed me and got me the compliments from the very people who attacked me.
So who’s to say that shame does not work? It did for me.
But what people didn’t know was that shame lingered long even after change occurred; and the change that happened through shame was extremely costly.
I continued to hate my body despite the so-called improvements I had made. I struggled with eating disorders throughout much of my adolescence. My mental health and self-esteem were in a terrible state. No matter how much I changed my body, the voice inside me always found another flaw to correct.
Contrary to my expectations, I did not grow into a more confident person by losing weight; instead, I became even more bitter and insecure.
Shame does create movement — but it’s movement driven by the fear of remaining who we are, not by the joy of becoming who we could be. Every time you rehearse self-contempt, you become better at the habit of contempt. How ironic that so many of us think that we can hate ourselves into becoming someone we can love.
Love has never worked that way.
You do not learn kindness through cruelty.
You do not become gentle by practising violence.
You practice love by loving.
The same way you practice running by running, not by standing still and blaming your legs.
It took me a quarter of my life to understand that.
Hi, I’m Janelle☆ Whoever you are, I hope today has been kind to you.
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