Until recently, she did not know the concept of body shaming. But when she started reading about him, it became clear to her what it was all about – she had heard insults about her appearance herself. Filmmaker Dagmar Smržová shot the first Czech documentary on this topic. He tells some powerful stories about eating disorders, exercise addiction and damaged self-esteem. The film Body in my head will be presented at the One World festival, which starts next week.
Middle-aged woman running on a treadmill in the gym. She seems confident and in good shape, she is groomed. But gradually we discover that behind the determined expression hides insecurity and great pain. “Fat fart, fat skin, fat shit,” she lists what she heard during her school years. “When the weight finally went down, it became an obsession. The only thing I thought about since morning was when I was going to go for a run, what I was going to eat,” says one of the heroines of the documentary.
Director Dagmar Smržová came up with a difficult task for people who have become victims of bullying because of their appearance. They told about their trauma in the television studio in front of other participants of the filming. “When those people decide to come and talk anyway, it’s clear that it really bothers them a lot,” says the documentary maker. At the same time, she wanted to achieve more attractive forms for the audience. According to her, the latter is more grateful for the discussion that is just beginning than the inner immersion.
“When we finished, we all cried,” says director Dagmar Smržová about filming. | Photo: Eva Koňaříková
The topic in the Czech environment more prominently for the first time she opened three years ago the singer Ridina Ahmedová with the Sádlo podcast. According to Smržová, the Czech documentary has not dealt with this issue yet.
As men and women in the television studio shared their struggles with damaged self-image, there were more than one tense situation. Some stories were not without tears – for example, the one told by a young dancer who quit ballet because of criticism of her body by teachers. Due to strong emotions, it was difficult for her to recount the experience, so someone from the audience came to the stage to support her. So sharing has become almost group therapy. “When we finished, we all cried. You could feel how terribly important it was and how good the people were that they could finally say it,” Smržová recalls.
Schools lack a safe environment
The documentarian became known mainly thanks to her documentaries Love me if you can a I want you if you can do it on sexual assistance for people with disabilities. She got to the topic of body shaming by accident – she was brought to it by the creative producer Veronika Slámová, with whom she had already collaborated in the past. “She asked me, ‘Have you heard of body shaming? It’s so trendy right now,'” he paraphrases.
“I sat down with it and started reading. I found out that it is written about here and abroad, but that it is nothing modern. It just has a modern name, but it is exactly the same as what I experienced before thirty or forty years ago,” says the fifty-seven-year-old filmmaker. She points out that although we don’t often see it, body shaming is a form of bullying.
She observed the main change in the form of insults, the role of social networks and the fact that during her adolescence the problem was not even discussed. “In the 1980s, criticism was seen as part of education. It was omnipresent. Parents believed that if they criticized us, we would do more and have a better life,” he recalls. But the opposite is true. “You will raise an insecure person who struggles with how he looks,” says the director.
According to her, today’s children suffer from the fact that they are exposed to constant evaluation on the networks. In addition, the story of one girl from the documentary shows that sometimes even the school does not want to deal with bullying. “Every time I pass, I hear some kind of comment,” says the person in question in the TV studio, who is afraid to go to the school canteen and the bus. “The school doesn’t react to it in any way,” notes the father of the bullied girl.
According to Smržová, schools lack a calm and safe environment where children could start to believe in themselves and their abilities – the reality is rather the opposite. “Sometimes the teachers themselves mock them, we also had such a case there. Then their self-confidence falters,” he says. According to the author, the school should actively help build it, not undermine it. “When you believe in yourself, you won’t collapse from what the environment tells you,” the way out shows.
Dagmar Smržová points out that the documentary does not promote obesity, as advocates of body shaming argue in similar cases. | Photo: One world
Value words
The consequences of body shaming are dangerous in that a person often does not “grow out” of them. This is also shown in The Body in My Head, which features teenage girls and boys as well as long-grown men and women. “It does happen sometime in childhood, in the first, third or fifth grade. You feel that it’s nothing. But then you still worry about it in your 20s, 40s, 50s. This is evident in the film,” says the director. “We wanted it to be seen that if it is not caught and dealt with, it has ugly consequences,” he adds.
Therefore, he appeals to people to value words, especially critical ones. “We still feel that it’s good to tell others how they look. I’ve made the mistake of doing it a few times too. One should think twice before speaking. We should think about the criticism and judgment that today’s society is built on, ” he urges. Smržová warns in advance that the documentary does not promote obesity, as advocates of body shaming argue in similar cases. “We’re just saying that everyone has value no matter what they look like,” he adds.
According to her, instead of creating uncertainty, we should empower young people as much as possible. “So that they are happy with what they can do and with their otherness. My films are always about otherness, about outsiders, about people on the margins. I try to look for the better in their situation,” he says. “If we strengthened individuals and supported their originality in them, insults from the outside would not touch them so much. Bodyshaming would remain in the mouths of a few nerds that no one would want to listen to,” he believes.
Video: My body was washed by a boulevard, it was bullying. I am a promoter of normality, says Farna (28/07/2021)
Many things have already taken their toll on my body, pregnancy has left marks on me. I accepted it, but it’s not a matter of course, a lot of women don’t have self-confidence. | Video: Martin Veselovský, DVTV
