If you are passionate about teaching, then Hackberry offers you franchise opportunities to turn this passion into your profession. Fill out the form now!
An unhealthy obsession with weight affects everyone- men, women, and even little girls. It's time to focus on health, not weight.
Everywhere you look, someone is dictating your body image -telling you to be thinner, or fatter. How does this morbid obsession with weight affect us?
I am not fat anymore.
No more clicking of tongues by older aunties at weddings, no more people teaching me yoga the moment they set eyes on my extra fat, and no more uncles telling me how their wives never gained weight after pregnancy.
I am not fat anymore because my baby is too thin.
The conversations now revolve around how much he eats or doesn’t eat and whether I am absolutely sure that he is a one year old and not 10 months old. I am given advice on how I should make him ‘plump’. Well, he is not a chicken, thank you very much.
A few years ago, the topic of polite conversation was the weather. Suddenly, everywhere I turn people are talking about weight. How to lose it, gain it, or maintain it. Everyone seems to be upset about the weight that they have or don’t have. Even the women with the ‘perfect figures’ like Deepika Padukone are taking the 2 week wedding challenge. I know of little girls who point at their tiny paunch and get upset about how fat they are.
I know of little girls who point at their tiny paunch and get upset about how fat they are. Where does this obsession end?
It is so ingrained in our psyche- that most conversations come around to this weighty issue. I almost had to bite my tongue to avoid joining in on a conversation regarding one of my cousins’ weight. Because I know how much it upset me at a wedding when every smiling namaste of mine was met with how much weight I had put on. I stayed indoors for most of that wedding because I ran out of sarcastic retorts pretty soon. Now in retrospect, I was not fat then. Neither am I fat now. I have a normal BMI and am healthy. I just won’t be walking on any ramps soon. Why are we so relentless about this weight issue and hell bent on making girls, women, and probably some men feel they are not good enough or are not trying hard enough? When it boils down to the real problems and difficulties we face in life, weight is such a non-issue.
When it boils down to the real problems and difficulties we face in life, weight is such a non-issue.
Shouldn’t the focus be on being healthy? A popular dietitian had written that anything can make you thin – starvation, sickness, or mental agonies. The same applies to putting on weight – stress, hormonal imbalances, and genetics- all play a role. Why obsess about making ourselves thin or fat, and commenting about others? Human bodies don’t stay 16 years old all our lives. They go through many expansions and contractions. I hope more people accept that, and be a little more thoughtful the next time they want to comment on someone else’s weight. I am sure they have weighing machines and mirrors at home.
Pic courtesy: Barbara K (Used under a CC license)
A traveler at heart and a writer by chance a vital part of a vibrant team called Women's Web. I Head Marketing at Women's Web.in and am always evolving new ways in read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, indivisual posts do not necessarily represent the platofrom's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
My house-help asked excitedly, “I am going for wedding. Can you let me wear your red & black saree? To be honest I was stumped for a moment; I didn’t know what to say but I still said yes.
I lent a gorgeous saree to my house-help for a wedding in her family. Soon I stated getting questions if I would wear that saree again or if I was okay to be seen wearing the same saree my house-help was wearing?
We are all so conditioned to give our used clothes to our house-helps but are we okay to wear the clothes they were wearing?
A few days ago she came excitedly to me, “I am going for a family wedding. I want to wear your red & black saree, Ill wash and give it to you after the function. Please can you let me wear it?”
Beauty is a very clever, very evil capitalist tool. It traps those who have it into hanging on to it for dear life and those who don't into mutilating, torturing themselves to achieve the unachievable.
I recently wrote a piece about MP Shashi Tharoor’s tweet in which he had shared a pic with six women parliamentarians tagging them and saying “Who says the Lok Sabha isn’t an attractive place to work?”
There was a rash of comments on the post shared on Instagram, which ranged from “chill, it’s just a compliment” and “stop overthinking compliments”, to (worried) men lamenting about “these feminazi”.
Here’s my answer to all those comments.
To all the people who have been offended or amused by my weight - Yes, I am ‘fat!’ And, no, I don’t care what you think about it! A funny look at fat shaming.
“To all the people who have been offended or amused by my weight – Yes, I am ‘fat!’ And, no, I don’t care what you think about it!” A funny look at fat shaming.
I have technically not been not fat since the 9th standard. What I couldn’t have guessed at that age, however, is how much that fact will continue to affect people’s perception of me, and sometimes even of my capabilities. Since those clueless school days till today, I have had casual jibes thrown at me by friends, acquaintances, and sometimes even absolute strangers, commenting on my apparently non-ideal proportion of body fat.
This was a helpful male friend commenting on a picture of me in a sari, disappointed that I had no chance of looking that good ever because I had now grown bigger. I must mention that this great insight into my slipping beauty/life standard had come apropos nothing. I had expressed no doubts about my body. I had not mentioned that photo that I had posted long ago on Facebook. I had just been quietly sipping my coffee. But then, randomly commenting on women’s bodies is a favourite pastime of many men and women, even of some whom we have befriended.
Being fit to meet your health goals is great. Denying yourself the chocolate to meet an arbitrary size goal? Not so much!
New year comes with new resolutions and the most common resolution is the one that involves “getting a killer figure” and pinning the likeness of Angelina, Deepika or Priyanka on one’s closet doors.
Let me start by declaring that according to my weight, my height should be around 6′ but I am not 6′ tall; I am a normal 5′ 3″ and I have spent most of my adult life wishing I was taller or more importantly, slimmer. I have also spent most of my teenage life dreaming of a 6′ partner, but that’s another story for another day!