Growing up, I looked in the mirror and saw no flaws. I engaged with my personality confidently; knowing I was skinny never bothered me.
But your first critics are often school bullies. Their harsh comments can kill your self-worth and societal pressure can affect your mental health, even later in life. Rather than taking criticism as a blow, I sought to learn from it. My self-worth mattered most.
Today, ‘beauty’ has become an obsession – botox, fillers, toned bodies... While using cosmetic advancements isn’t wrong, overdoing them is and certainly shouldn’t define one’s accomplishment. I have tried to create a healthy relationship with my body.
Seek no external validation, but an ‘innate’ one from within, a habitual practice which makes me glow.
- Anju Kapoor
“Which dress, Grace?” her childhood bestie Shilpa asked, holding up two identical ones.
“The white one, of course,” Grace said smiling.
“Just imagine it against the blue Maldivian waters.”
Shilpa raised an eyebrow. “White shows everything. Black is safer,” she paused, “for your body type.”
Grace hesitated. “Black for the summer?”
“And get longer shorts,” Shilpa added. “Your thighs are distracting.”
Grace forced a laugh and quietly paid for the black dress.
“I think I’ll head home,” she said. “I feel a headache coming on. Not up for a full day out.”
Shilpa scoffed. “God, you’re so sensitive.”
Grace got into the Uber and rode away in silence, watching the once sparkling blue of the Maldivian waters fade to dull gray in her mind.
- Veronica Selvarajan
Growing up, I was always called ‘fat’ or a ‘tomboy’ because of my ‘broad shoulders’ and ‘hefty build’. God! How I hated those words. It is hard to remember if those comments led to me having a poor body image in the first place or if they only aggravated an existing insecurity. Either way, it affected me enough to starve myself - I would stuff food in my pocket and eat in the girl’s washroom. Even mentally, I felt ‘lesser than’; I was not even morbidly obese, just a few kilos overweight. This insecurity continued well into my 20s, when I did not think I could be attractive enough to a man - a hard thing to process at that age. However, watching videos of ‘fat’ but super stylish women on social media changed my perspective. I learned that all sizes could look beautiful. In fact, this mental shift helped me shed my extra kilos – with empathy. It took me 38 years to love myself - better late than never.
- Melissa Nazareth, GulfWeekly Editor
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