Am I a hater?
On body-shaming and how to be a better person.
These are chaotic days for Italy, a new government has just been formed and hopefully it will be more humane than its predecessor.
The previous one lasted 14 months and for this period the Italian writer Michela Murgia has been heavily insulted on social media by random haters for the way she looks (maybe also for the way she criticized the former Italian Vice Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, who is a hater himself).
How is she? Well, she is overweight, and this simple fact apparently entitled people to call her terrible names and even wishing her to be raped. Disgusting, horrifying, inhumane.
In commenting these insults, Michela Murgia stated that what has been done to her is called body-shaming and even if addressed to a woman’s body, its aim is to crush the target’s spirit.
Well, I do not know much about Michela Murgia’s work, but I know that I am just like her haters.
Obviously, I have never insulted her on any social platform because on paper I am a left-wing young person, who never had a racist nor homophobic thought in her life and that is all about equality, social justice and puppies.
The truth though, is that every time I see an overweight person, I make pretty awful comments.
The truth is that every time someone is not as well educated as me, I make pretty awful comments.
The truth is that every time someone does not follow the rigid rules that arbitrarily I have decided they should use as guide for their life, I make pretty awful comments. I do not even stop in front of the people that I love the most.
The truth is that I am so full of hate that I cannot help but throw this hate in everyone’s face. Like I am guided bomb and these people are simply collateral damages.
The truth is that every time I look at myself in the mirror, I would like to set myself on fire for how much disgusting I appear to my own eyes. I would torn my flesh with my own hands.
I do not think that Michela Murgia sees herself that way. I bet she can find at least five things of her body that she likes. I bet her husband finds her beautiful.
The truth is that every time I try to express my thoughts in front of other people, I struggle to make my voice heard and I feel their judgement, I feel that what I am saying is useless and I asked myself why on earth I keep on looking for human interaction.
I do not think that Michela Murgia feels that way. I bet she always has something witty to say and that her friends find her presence refreshing and her personality insightful.
The truth is that I know how some of Michela Murgia’s haters feel (some other unfortunately are simply assholes). I know how it is when your own life seems meaningless: you actually feel it with every inch of your body that whatever is going on with you is completely worthless and you become a waste of space.
When I read Michela Murgia’s reaction to her haters’ comments, I felt a wave of Christian pietas for them and not because they are poor victims of some twisted system, but because I know how it is to loathe yourself so much that you start feeling inadequate towards anything and anyone and the only way you have to cope with it, is to viciously attack someone else.
Someone that represents everything that most probably you will never be: a woman that is not ashamed of herself, a woman with a brain that is not afraid of using it, a woman with opinions who is not afraid of sharing them. A woman who is able to face criticism without letting it undermine her self-respect.
A woman that most probably loves herself and this what we are lacking: self-love.
Wise people say that the first step in solving any problem is admitting that you have one: if this is the case, I am here to admit that I am so full of hate that I am losing my empathy, my ability to see other people. My self loathe is making me blind to my own worth and, consequently, to other people’s one.
It would be revolutionary if me and all the haters, not only Michaela Murgia’s ones, that recognized themselves in what I have just written, would start to repeating to ourselves that we are worth, that we are enough and by casting this spell on us, stopping hating everyone else as well.
Someone might argue that haters and bullies are not the victims and while I do believe that this is true and that attacking others is always a condemnable act, I also know, or at least I want to hope, that no one is born hating other people for whatever reason and that as we have learned how to loathe ourselves, we can, in the same way, learn how to love and accept ourselves and, in the process, understand that we can project this feeling on the rest of world.
How to do that, is still a mystery to me but working hard to achieve that result might make our lives worth living.
W.B.
