Thembi Hama, a Johannesburg-based psychologist, gives insight on how body-shaming can affect a person.
1. Low self-esteem
They might think something is wrong with their body weight, and if that’s something they think, I can’t do anything about it. It’s self-hate. They even resort to changing their skin colour, as they just feel ugly.
2. Numb the pain
Usually you can’t correct how society looks at you, so we numb the pain and might end up having addictive tendencies, like alcohol or drugs. Mainly it’s to forget who we are and what we look like to the society.
3. Enhancing your look
People will try to find ways to “correct” how they want to look to other people. Some will even go under the knife – resort to plastic surgeries that can cost thousands – as long they feel good about their images.
