“This is a scandal! Where has the celebration of body positivity, the championing of gender, the pride in being yourself, the celebration of inclusivity gone? This is fatphobia! “I blurt out passionately, talking to Domi, a very young friend, a non-binary person, in short, a boy who is not subject to any traditionalist suspicions.
From Sam Smith to Harry Styles
I apologize for the asterisks, but these are the rules of political correctness. She/he and I are talking about abuse received by singer Sam Smith: Jovial, funny and unashamedly overweight, he was brutally abused on social media for wearing skintight sequined jumpsuits, eighteenth-century corsets and Marie Antoinette crinolines in a popular video. I’m not here to make friends. Indeed, some on Twitter said that Smith should have been “thinking about the kids” by posting the kind of content that, at most, features a very busty chest of Kumenda on the seashore (and now no offense, Kumenda).
Sam Smith in December 2022. (Photo by Gettyimages Derek White/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
These days the singer Harry Stylesjaunty, straight and brazenly slender, he received praise and praise for choosing an outfit for the concert that was virtually identical to the one Smith wore, but which made his fragile anatomy look like a “straight man championing the rights of the LGBTQIA community.” …” (and if you have additional letters representing any sexual minority, please continue.)
“Here are double standards, here is selective indignation!” – I shout to Domi. Who, after looking at himself in the mirror for a long time in his designer powder compact, calmly answers me: “No, sorry: dressed like that, Sam was terrible. The suit was not his size, the trousers did not fit well, the straps were too thin and therefore did not harmonize with his physical structure. He just didn’t feel good.” And he shows me a photograph in which the plump artist is captured in a magnificent double-breasted Prada coat with large faux fur puffs on the sleeves: in fact, it is more flattering than ladies’ corsets and royal baskets. There is an awkward silence. At least from me.
Harry Styles at the 2023 Grammy Awards (Photo by Gettyimages by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
Is there a line between self-expression and ridiculousness?
In reality: we who flaunt maximum freedom of appearancelet’s spread independence in clothing, let’s spread invitations to use clothes as identification, emancipation, do we know how ugly we all are in our ID photos? Where is the thin theoretically impassable path separating individualism from ridicule? And if this path exists (of course it does), who would be brave enough to point it out to an interested party who would accuse us of widespread discrimination?
Loving your body as it is, even if it is not ideal by society’s standards, does not exclude see what the best version of us offers, without being condemned as retrograde, fanatic, patriarchy. We always return to the usual, dear, old argument: self-love presupposes not aesthetic anarchy, but also a culture of the correct use of the mirror. “You know, dressing up is like a game,” Lella Costa, my dear friend and grown woman, intelligently told me as we sat at a bar, watching mothers dressed like little girls and older gentlemen in jeans and stretchy T-shirts. . “If you liked certain toys as a child, why do you have to continue to have fun with the same ones when you grow up? Change them, have fun, mutate, experiment.”
Saying no to standardized standards, to bullying, to criticism is a battle that has been going on for some time, but which, like all real struggles, cannot justify everything, absolutely everything. Being open to change in accepting different anatomies must go hand in hand with welcoming the mutation of our body.: men, women, gays, trans, lesbians and homosexuals. It is not a matter of size, of conventions that enclose us in numbers. It is a matter of (good) taste that gets lost and in doing so gives rise to horrors: flip-flops in the city, capris thirty kilometers from the sea, a white T-shirt with the logo of a pizzeria or a cap from a local paint company.
We should be grateful to our body, because it is thanks to it that we can hug our loved ones, pet cats, shake hands with a stranger, listen to a new song, see another beautiful sunset. And that is why we owe him respect and kindness. And first of all! – when we put it on.
Antonio Mancinelli
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Friend © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED