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Babita Jaishankar, who is an image consultant and fashion designer, shaved off her hair, despite appearance being so important in her profession.
In a world, where people give so much importance to looks, Babita Jaishankar shaved her hair off for cancer patients. What is more interesting is that, she is a fashion designer and an image consultant. She is in professions where appearance is the centre point of everything. Yet she stood for what she believed in, that what matters in inside you. This is what she had to say in her facebook page. We truly admire this gesture of her.
It was a very quick decision when I was asked if would like to donate my hair. I was told that I could cut it really short, but since I was donating to a cause that I strongly believed in, I decided I’d go all the way. Being bald wasn’t an easy thing to imagine for myself, considering how important hair is to physical appearance. Considering that my entire corporate life is centered on appearance, I’m surprised at how quickly I made up my mind to do what I did.
Once my mind was made up, I began to really look forward to it. I suppose a large part of my exhilaration was because I’d been working with cancer survivors, and I’d finally be able to relate to them in one aspect of their struggle. To meit was to feel what they felt while going through their treatment and suffering from hair loss. The loss of hair tends to affect people at an emotional level, causing their self image to deteriorate. I wanted to show them that not having hair doesn’t mean that they’re not beautiful anymore. It just means that they’ll have to hold their heads a bit higher.
I’ll admit that I had my own selfish reasons as well, though. I wanted to work on my own self esteem as well. I knew that I was a little vain when it came to my hair. I didn’t want my confidence to be based on what other people thought of me, or on one single fraction of what made me, me. I wanted to be comfortable enough in my own skin to make my very public, daily commute, be able to post pictures on my social media and feel beautiful even without hair. Someone asked me what donating my hair would do for cancer. The truth is, maybe it might not do anything for cancer. But I know that it’ll do something for me, and I can only inspire people to feel beautiful after they’ve lost their hair if I can do it myself.
All photos via Facebook
Proud Indian. Senior Writer at Women's Web. Columnist. Book Reviewer. Street Theatre - Aatish. Dreamer. Workaholic. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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