April 23--Find a minute (two minutes and 25 seconds, actually) to watch fitness blogger and online trainer Cassey Ho's powerful video about body shaming and artifice--two modern scourges simultaneously feeding one other.
The 28-year-old Blogilates host is a certified fitness instructor who posts fitness videos and meal tips, offers 30-day challenges (flat abs challenge, sleek arm challenge, etc.) and leads in-person fitness meet-ups around the country. She keeps it all very uplifting and motivational.
She has a book, "Cassey Ho's Hot Body Year-Round: The Pop Pilates Plan to Get Slim, Eat Clean, and Live Happy Through Every Season" (Harmony) and what appears to be, from where I sit, her very own hot body.
But people call her fat. They tell her to lose the love handles and get a six-pack like all the other trainers. They tell her to take her career seriously and lose some weight. "No offense," one person wrote, "but you have no butt."
"I've learned how to deal with it by growing a thicker skin," Ho wrote on her blog last week. "Within the past few months though, it's gotten really negative online. It's actually been terrible. ... I try my best to hold back my tears and tighten my mouth so that I don't frown. But sometimes, it gets to be too much. So I break."
The video shows Ho digitally altering her body in real time to reach an ideal that the body shamers would have her aspire to. Smaller thighs and waist, larger breasts and butt, a more angular face.
She posted a photo of herself on Instagram with the digital alterations in place and received a stunning mix of reactions.
"OH MY GOSH SHE IS PERFECT"
"You look amazing"
"Still too fat."
"What worries me is this," Ho noted in a later Instagram post. "1. That some people think this is real and that it should be 'goals.' 2. That some people still think it's not good enough.
"It's tough knowing what's real and what's not when magazine covers and music videos are photoshopped (yes, music videos), Instagram pics are photoshopped, and so many women are getting surgery," she continued. "How are we to know what kind of beauty can be naturally achieved when everything around us is so deceiving?"
Good question.
I'll add a few more of my own: Why are we continually wallowing in this muck of shaming each other's bodies? Why do we see female flesh and decide it's our job to judge and rate it? Why are we picking on strangers?
Because she puts herself out there. That's our robotic response. Her stomach is on my screen, in my face; obviously I get to have an opinion about it.
Which reminds me of a bit of advice I once received from Kim John Payne, a long-time school counselor and author of "Simplicity Parenting" (Ballantine Books). He may not have coined this gem (I've also seen it credited to Buddha, among others), but it's worth adopting, regardless of its origins.
"Before you speak, ask yourself three questions: Is it true? Is it kind? And is it necessary?"
It's a tough set of criteria to meet for every single utterance, but it sure would be swell if we employed it on this particular topic with which we are perilously fixated: other people's bodies.
Thanks for the lesson, Cassey Ho.
hstevens@tribpub.com
