My friend and I was talking about obesity when he gave me the idea how or why obesity has become a norm especially in Malaysia and even worldwide.
In the past, obesity is considered as something “wrong”and obese people are usually made fun of. They were laughed at and bullied at school. They are the unpopular group in highschool and most obese people suffer from low self-esteem due to the stigma by the public.
However in our recent years, slowly we see more and more obese people and they are the successful people in most fields. In school (unfortunately), they (the obese kid) is the bullies instead of being bullied by.
(by the way do you know that in the past….during our ancestors time, “bullies” actually means sweetheart?! Shocking right? )
Anyway, how can be someone fat, laughed and make fun of other kids, most probably the healthier kid? (Well, I said this cuz usually a fat kid won’t pick on other fat kid…they won’t even use the ‘fat’ word!). The explanation is simple enough; it is because obese kid has become the majority while healthier kid becoming the minor group and the rule of “bullying” is, the more prominent, larger group will make fun of the less prominent or smaller group.
Let me stress it out, obese people are increasing (especially younger generation / the fast-food-high-tech-gadgets generation) …and thus the stigma towards obese people are slowly shifted.
Or is it the other way around?
Instead of the stigma is lifted cuz there are more obese people
or
obese people are increasing in number cuz the stigma is somehow lifted?
(saya pun confused…figure it out on it on your own! Haha)
STIGMA!
It is the same with divorce. Although the divorce rate per year in general has somehow level off but the divorce rate in newlywed are sadly up to 67%...in other words out of 10 newlyweds, only 3 couples can rely on their marriage to stay. This is the American divorce rate but I believe the pattern is not that much different in our homeland…(Daniel Goleman, 1995)
In the past there is this stigma on divorcee….name calling like ‘janda berhias’and so on has such a negative image on the divorcee. In the past, most woman decide to stay in her unhappy miserable marriage and somehow she live through it, focusing her attention on her children and try to work things out (instead of pack-up and leave).Nowadays, the stigma is somehow lessen. Divorcee is more accepted since there are more and more of them. They have their own association and such and the entire stigma has little impact. Thus in the long, run more and more people accept divorce and perhaps didn’t try hard enough to stay and work out their marriage.
My point is, stigma do have positive effect in our life. As human we do care about what others think of us. We listen and we think about it. Sometimes we need these critiques to help us in making a wiser decision…it helps to motivate us to try harder…sometimes.
But since obese and divorce (and lots of other example) are more accepted in our culture, and the stigma is somehow lifted, we need something else, something larger to avoid being obese or getting ourselves a divorce. We need a more meaningful motivation to stop us from indulging in those red velvet cupcakes…hmmm….haha
Of course for some people, such things are unavoidable. It’s all fate..written and done. The end result doesn’t really matter. What truly matter is we’ve try hard enough to work it out…at least for me that is what truly matter. We have no control on our future but we can somehow try to shape them with our present decisions and actions …
p/s: I have no intention to hurt anyone out there….I am fat myself…I know how it feels like to feel inferior…I’ve been ridicule before…I’ve been there…and I’ve done that…
I’m taking obesity and divorce as an example simply based on my discussion with a friend and also my reading….Takde kene mengene ngan yang hidup ataupun yang sudah meninggal dunia. I hope you guys can imply this in other aspect of our life…such as homosexualism, gender-modification, plastic-surgery, lipo-suction, botoxification (haha….i made that up!)…etc…