Waist measurement is a physical characteristic.
To clearly define the concept of physical characteristics, we must clarify in advance the meaning of the two terms that form it.
We call characteristic each of the qualities that a person or thing possesses and that serves to identify it compared to others. All people and objects have authentic aspects that differentiate them from others and from the rest of things.
Physical , on the other hand, is a term with several meanings. In this case we are interested in this term as an adjective, which indicates what belongs to or is relative to the corporeal constitution (as opposed to moral) or which refers to the exterior of a person.
What are physical characteristics
Having made this parenthesis, we can affirm that physical characteristics are those external qualities of a human or non-human animal, which serve to differentiate it from the rest of its peers. The concept could also be used to name the aspect of a plant or a thing, although this use is rarely used since the physical is generally linked to the corporeal and it is not usually said that a plant or an object has a body.
If we want to list the physical characteristics of a person, we will refer to their height , their build , their hair and eye color, their skin , etc. For example: “Ramón is a fat, blonde boy who lives on the floor below,” “Do you see that lady with gray hair and light eyes? She is the owner of the bar on the corner” , “The last time I spoke with Daniela she was a girl with freckles and curly hair: now she is a woman who is 1.80 meters tall and is the mother of two children.” All of these expressions, then, include mentions of physical characteristics ( Ramón 's fatness and blonde status; the bar owner's gray hair and light eyes; Daniela 's freckles, hair, and height).
The pejorative use of certain adjectives
«Physical characteristics do not really define us; our actions do it".
In recent years , a new form of discrimination has emerged, based on the appearance or physical characteristics of individuals.
Due to the multiple attacks that many people have suffered , legislators from different countries have launched draft Laws for Equal Treatment , whose main objective is to prevent the marginalization of any person whose physical characteristics leave them outside the socially determined beauty stereotype. It would be, broadly speaking, a project that definitively fights against all those types of social discrimination in which a person's physical characteristics are taken into the foreground to judge and diminish the person who brings them together.
A bald man smiles with his thumb raised.
Rethinking physical characteristics
We often see in job advertisements the requirement that candidates have a "good appearance" ; There is nothing more outrageous than this since we do not choose how we look but neither do our physical aspects make us one person or another: this means that our professional capacity is not limited by our physical appearance but by our intellectual characteristics that make us into a professional more or less equipped for the task he performs.
On the other hand, many groups that defend the rights of individuals work for the resignification of certain words . Terms like "gorda", "orejón", "petiso", "etc" in themselves do not have a negative connotation ; This appears when they are used with said emphasis.
If we get people to take control of the words and ensure that they do not harm us, we will be able to ensure that these adjectives never again pierce social harmony and deprive us of living a happy life. This is what these types of projects propose and launch multiple campaigns. characteristics that seek to collaborate with balance through the empowerment of the bodies.