We use the phrase “inner beauty” to describe that unseen aspect of a person that is intrinsically good. To possess inner beauty is to be kind, honest, and selfless. It means you can look past the faults of others, and see their true worth. It is to be the best person you can possibly be and to share that quality to inspire the good in others.
A new form of online harassment has gained popularity on the internet, yet for all the wrong reasons. Using the hashtag "#thInnerbeauty", this campaign claims to inspire weight loss and to fight obesity. By incorporating "inner beauty" in their so-called mission, they have morphed the phrase into an entirely shallower conception of beauty. What was once meant to invoke positive self-regard and self-love now reinforces shame for one's body.
The online group was originally known as "Project Harpoon," beginning on Reddit and 4chan. Taking images of celebrities and everyday women alike, the group began Photoshopping women to appear slimmer and posting the images on social media.
Facebook and Instagram have removed the Project Harpoon accounts, yet the group has since relocated.
The group also has its very own website featuring galleries of women who have been photoshopped, most without their consent.
This is what is printed on the site's "Welcome" page:
Here at #thInnerBeauty, we provide people with visible, achievable health goals. We do this by showing how much more beautiful they could be if they made the difficult, lifelong commitment to a regimen of personal fitness. You can find examples of such in the gallery. You can also find stories of people whom this movement positively affected on the testimonials page.
For the record, this movement is not one of hate, like some may claim. It is not hateful to encourage people to be happy, healthy and beautiful. In fact, we’d go as far as to say the opposite: It is hateful to want people to be unhealthy, and to try and make people think that such a thing is okay.
I'm sorry, what?
It's inappropriate enough for a stranger to photoshop a person's body, without their consent, in order to distort their physical appearance. Yet to do so in a way that purposefully shames their current physical appearance, meanwhile glorifying the slim ideal, is downright outrageous. These women have the right to love their bodies for how they are, not how a stranger thinks they should be.
The captions on these photographs consistently assume that to be even slightly overweight is to be obese. It assumes that curvier pop-culture icons somehow set a bad example for their fans by showing pride for their bodies. It assumes that these women's bodies are somehow their business.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to inspire others to be healthy, but that is just not the case here. Slimming down someone's body in a photograph does not promote a healthy lifestyle, but rather establishes unfair or unrealistic expectations. A woman who works out regularly and eats well may not fit into Project Harpoon's thin standard of beauty, yet they are just as healthy as someone who does.
The promotion of thin being the standard for beauty is by no means new. Every day, this ideal is encouraged in advertisements on television for a new fad diet, and on brightly colored magazine covers that promise a flat stomach just four weeks. Out of this plague of body-shaming comes a better alternative: body positivity.
This is how The Ellipses Project describes body positivity:
Body positivity is a radical redefinition and reclamation of the body. It arose in response to a Western culture that recognizes only white, able-bodied, heterosexual, and thin bodies as worthy and beautiful.
Rather than seeing the body as a problem and an imperfect object that must be modified, body positivity advocates fully inhabiting your body as it is, honoring and respecting all bodies, and resisting the ways in which our bodies are oppressed.
Beauty is more than physical appearance. It transcends the feminine ideal that has been hammered into our brains since we were young to encompass all that we are, and all that we want to be.
What matters is that you are healthy and happy in your own skin. Your body is your body. Be kind to it.
