Stop It.

If you have any form of social media, then you have most likely recently come across a picture that looks something like this: there's a photograph of an conventionally unattractive woman (i.e overweight, bad skin, all of that fun unattainable beauty standard stuff) along with the caption along the lines of "Have you seen Adam/Joe/Etc? He said he would meet me here." Facebook users then share these photos with their friends of the mentioned name to embarrass them. For Example:

This is a real one. By the way, the woman in this photograph deals with an agonizing disorder that doesn't allow her body to store fat and stole the vision in one eye. So yeah. Hilarious.

Everyone gets a good laugh and it's harmless, right?

Well, actually, no.

This trend is cruel and incredibly offensive and damaging. Take it from someone who knows.
I don't just identify with the type of girl in these memes.

I was that girl.

I was that girl who had boys come up to her in middle school on dares and falsely ask me to be their friend's girlfriend as a humiliation tactic. I was that girl who was repeatedly told, both directly and through actions of others, that the very thought of being romantic with her was horrifying and unimaginable. As if my own preteen girl's inner voice wasn't mean enough to me, I had outside sources confirming its hateful words. It happened more than once, and each time it ate at me, leaving deep scars that ached quietly at all times, and that still reopen to hurt me often. These are painful wounds that I don't think will ever close, and that I'll have to fight my whole life to conquer.

I would put on a brave face when it happened, and I remember writing a Facebook status about it, stating how I was too good for them anyway, but I didn't believe it. When I looked in the mirror, I saw what they had taught me to see: An ugly, unloveable girl of no worth. They are an enormous part of the reason that I have never been able to tell anyone that I'm interested in them, because all I hear in the grating, crushing laughter of those boys from so long ago.

And while I thankfully wasn't made into one of the memes,  I have experienced exactly the same mysogonistic, damaging sentiment.  I don't tell this story to elicit sympathy or to gain attention. In fact, I still carry shame from it and I'm intensely uncomfortable talking about it. But I feel that it's important to share to help people look deeper at what they post. To those of you who keep sharing these memes, I respond with the words of the brilliant Dieter F. Uchtdorf: Stop it.

Stop yourself the next time you see one of these pictures, even if it has the perfect name on it of your friend/son/cousin/whatever. Stop and think about the person whose image is being stolen and held against them. Think about the girl on your friends list who might scroll past it and see herself in the meme, and realize that so many people think girls like her are unlovable. That she's unloveable. Think about any time anyone had made you feel less-than, and decide if you want to be the kind of person who makes others experience that.

Every time one of these memes is shared, that culture of shame and hatred is perpetuated further and further. Is this a world you want your daughters growing up in? Or your sons, for that matter? Nothing healthy can grow in such a toxic mindset.

Please help stop it.