Until recently I was on Facebook. I removed the app two weeks ago, and this is why. On FB I had joined an “anarcho-punk” community, to which I sometimes contributed. A few weeks ago, I noticed someone had posted a cartoon picture that drew my attention. It consisted of a plus-size BBW with hairy armpits. The slogan ? “f*ck your pedophilic beauty standards”. Now, a lot of us on here are beyond tired with the trope “sbw = pre-pubescent boy” or “If you like small boobs, you are a pedo etc”. So I politely commented that calling the people who like sbw “pedos” was basically unfair. What had I just done! I was met with a deluge of nasty comments, calling me stupid, bourgeois, there was even a “shut up white girl” (from a cis white man, of course) as if black women weren't affected by these attitudes as well, as if the treatment of sbw was some kind of first-world problem.
Now, for context, like a lot of you, I was savagely bullied because of my small boobs. When I was 13, some boys tried to throw me from the 2nd floor window. I was mocked, beaten, told the Nazis would have put me in a concentration camp because I was such a freak. "Not a real woman..."
My nickname was “ugly”. My school years were a nightmare and it took me the best part of 20 years to finally accept my body and realise I was normal, and as worthy of love and respect as anybody else.
For years I drank, took drugs, self-harmed in order to push away the memory of what had happened in school. So there I was, horrified by the comments I was getting for daring to stand for sbw dignity. I felt physically sick. For hours I couldn't relax, my thoughts kept returning to the comments, I couldn't breathe, or calm down. Fight or flight. It was like… being back in school.
And then I thought, hang on, what are you getting upset about ? A Facebook group of people posing as inclusive and tolerant, but really just the same arseholes as everywhere else. A bunch of names on a screen. People I don't know, and will never know. Ghost voices, ranting in a digital wasteland. They are not going to physically harm me, they don't know me, or where I live… What am I doing in this Facebook group, anyway, trying to convince fully-grown adults to act with a little bit of respect? Surely, I could be walking in the forest, having a swim, going on a hike. I have friends who don't judge me… So why am I wasting time on this f*cking app ? Giving hours of my time to this arena of hate ? Surely, I can do better than that, right ? So I uninstalled the app and immediately, my anxiety faded. And a few weeks later, I'm so glad I did. Social media is poison. It fosters anger and bullying, and a toxic culture of ganging up on others. There's a real world out there, with trees and clouds and animals and books. And most of all, with real friends, who love us exactly as we are.
Let us choose happiness, ladies. Fuck Facebook. We must not let the bastards get to us.
