Ladies say, 'Baby got tact'

It's hard not to ignore the allure of the Pirate Rants section of the newspaper. The morbid curiosity that grabs us when we read about people's dramatic personal lives and dark confessions is undeniable. From cheating significant others to admissions of pretty bizarre behavior, we all feel entertained by the curious way our fellow students act and even hope that some of the more positive rants are about us.

Yet, there's one facet of the Pirate Rants that, in my opinion, reflects more poorly on the students than any admission of over-partying or drunkenness could ever do: body snarking.

What's body snarking? Well, in short, it's comments that only focus on a person's body and not on anything that person can actually control. For example: making fun of someone's height, natural hair color, skin color or body type. These usually take the form of teasing redheads, insulting men and women who are naturally larger than others or making fun of people for being too short or too tall to wear certain clothing.

One rant especially, that ran about a year ago, was targeted at a girl working out in the gym for having what the author called "cottage cheese thighs." I think it would be obvious that anyone in the gym is attempting to improve his or her body. It seems that the author wasn't happy with having to share the gym with someone not as naturally as skinny as them -- and instead focused, maybe even obsessed, over the person's body to the point of feeling it was necessary to submit an anonymous rant about it.

This behavior strikes me as absolutely deplorable and even a little bit insane. What does it do to improve your own looks to snark on another person's body? Especially on things they can't even control? Does it really make you feel better to insult another person for their looks, and, if so, what does that say about you that you feel you have to put down other's in order to accept your own body?

Of course, I realize that many people only snark on others' looks in order to feel better about themselves, and the anonymity allowed in Pirate Rants often allows those who would normally only allow for a passing thought on another's looks to take a full-fledged attack on that person in the name of entertainment.

I suppose there's nothing I can say here that can really take care of body snarking. Anyone who enjoys tearing others down for their looks isn't going to take a long-winded opinion piece to heart and change their ways. On that note, anybody that agrees with me is probably not the type of person I'm really trying to convince anyway.

All I really ask is, next time you're about to submit that rant about someone based off of how disgusted you were with their hair, their body or whatever, think about how you'd feel if you opened up the paper and read someone describing you in detail and how disgusted they were with you.

Would it still be harmless entertainment or would it finally cross the line into abuse?

This writer can be contacted at opinion@theeastcarolinian.com.