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I’m not sure I agree that stopping shaming for depression and anxiety was a wise decision. More generally, it seems that “society” is incapable of transitioning from “shaming a behavior” to “tolerating a behavior”, without the pendulum swinging way too far the other way and outright celebrating various forms of antisocial behavior. I might just be too internet-culture-war-brained, but the big examples of formerly shamed behaviors like homosexuality, transgender, various mental illnesses, to older culture war fights about how women should dress or whether people should have sex before marriage tend to immediately flip from general intolerance, to encouragement and celebration, without much of a “tolerate but don’t encourage” phase. It seems like you basically can’t get rid of shame, you can only change the polarity of it. Now you are shamed for being a *phobe, or for not having the “basic human decency” to accommodate people’s questionable self-diagnosed mental illnesses. Are there any examples of this not being the case, maybe for more banal, less politically charged behaviors? The only thing I can think of maybe is obesity, where most people agree it’s rude to outright shame people for being fat, but the “celebrating fatness” movement hasn’t really taken off
Maybe there's no "celebrating fatness" movement per se, but the last time I was in the US (over a year ago) I was struck with the girth of the women used as models in the women's clothing section--I feel the need to point out I noticed this peripehrally; I was not myself shopping for a brassiere. I should have taken photos of the posters. Maybe it's because I live in an Asian country where women (and men) are generally more relatively petite and thus the models here are more lithe and reflect the populace, but it was jarring to see women I would consider overweight modeling lingerie in six-foot posters.
The heyday of body-positivity on social media was a couple of years back, it's said (I'm not observing it -relating what others have said) The things those fools were promoting - such as 'listening to your body' for when to eat lead to pretty much uncontrolled weight gain in the long run. In the end even the crowd figures that out.
Some ad agencies definitely went on that bandwagon and are staying there, however, once popular support ceases it'll probably go away. This sexual harassment lawsuit against Lizzo won't help the cause either.
I had no idea there was a 'BBC Pidgin ' Fascinating.
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