A study on body shaming among school-going adolescents in the Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Body shaming is the act of saying something negative about a person’s body. People who don’t fit into the beauty standards constructed by our society experience body shaming. The study population of this research is Adolescents who are in the age group 10 to 19. The aims of this study are to identify the existence of body shaming among school-going adolescents and to find out the impact of body shaming on the victim’s patterns and actions. Finally, to identify the relation between body shaming and the victim’s urge to change their presentation of appearance. For this study, the primary data was collected from 149 school-going adolescents from three schools in Tiruvallur District, Tamil Nadu, India. The present study found that body shaming exists among school-going adolescents and the overall prevalence of body shaming found out in this study is 72 percent. This study found that body shaming has a considerable impact on its victim’s patterns and actions. Many victims of body shaming avoid meeting the body shamer and avoid visiting the place where they are body shamed. This study also found that 58 percent of adolescents have the urge to change or improve their presentation of physical appearance due to body shaming.