While it can be hard not to resist some of the ways that cultures can change as we get older, we can also look back at the past and wonder how some of the things we had to put up with were ever considered acceptable.
For instance, more people nowadays are conscious of the amount of harm that constant scrutiny of someone’s body can do to their mental health. But it wasn’t so long ago that we could hardly turn on our TVs without seeing someone blatantly exaggerate the size of celebrities and judge them harshly for any deviation from a very specific ideal beauty standard.
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And sure, some of us will often find it hard to feel too sorry for people much richer than us, but that messaging also tended to affect how we perceive each other and ourselves.
That’s had a ripple effect to the present day because while there’s a wider understanding that shaming people for their bodies is wrong, the issue still remains serious enough that people have found themselves thrown off of planes and out of gyms as a result.
But one woman’s story reminds us that this isn’t something we have to put up with anymore.
In a video uploaded to TikTok on April 18, a woman named Dalina began her story by saying, “I need to know if I’m being dramatic.”
As she told it, things began normally enough with a tattoo artist approaching her while they were in the gym and offering his services since she clearly has an affinity for them.
And after he gave her his card and she looked him up, she was impressed enough with his work to choose him for a tattoo she was meaning to get done over her stomach.
But things soon started to go awry for her after she came to his shop and he told her to take off her shirt.
At this point, only her nipples were covered and the artist apparently picked this moment to start making some unprofessional comments about her body.
Although her suspicions were raised when he started talking about how asymmetrical he found her and especially when he referred to her breasts in a demeaning way, there was one last comment that served as the final straw for Dalina.
In her words, “I turn around and he goes, ‘Oh I get why I see you at the gym all the time. You’ve got back rolls.'”
As she put it, “I got up and I paid him and I left.”
By and large, commenters agreed that she was not being dramatic and that it’s easy to see why the artist’s remarks made her uncomfortable.
That said, some wondered why she paid him.
Dalina responded in a follow-up video and said that given their differences in size and his isolated garage-based shop, she figured that was the best way to prevent the situation from becoming unsafe.
And since the artist’s behavior appalled several other tattoo artists as well, Dalina revealed in yet another follow-up that a couple of them had offered to finish the job.
And it seems she’s taken one of them up on that offer.
As she told Bored Panda, she is now working with another artist named Paula who has already started to pick up where the man left off and contacted her soon after Dalina released her video.
As Dalina put it, “I’m excited to see how it finishes, but overall I’m happy I stopped him when I did so I could get it completed by someone who respected me.”
