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Sameera Reddy aces #FlashbackFriday with an image from her teenage years. She calls out the sexism in the times when she wasn’t considered beautiful because of being fat and dark.
‘Moti, Kali bhootni, Hathi’ and what not, comments to shame women about their skin colour and body type are not new in our society. From general women to celebrities no one is spared from the sexist eyes of our society. This mentality wants women to fit into the tight compartment of being fair and having a 36-24-36 body shape.
There are many influencers and celebrities who have been raising their voice against this sexist behaviour. One such strong voice trying to break these stereotypes is actress Sameera Reddy.
Sameera is one of the prominent voices demanding an end to the culture of body shaming of women that surrounds us. She was not excluded from it even when she was pregnant, and was trolled for her pregnancy weight!
The actress despite all the trolling has always raised her voice against the unrealistic body standards. During her pregnancy she got an underwater photoshoot done. She shared it with the caption “Pregnant or not, it’s important to understand that you have to love your body.”
She gave it back to this mindset of society again recently. The actress shared a photo from her teenage years on Instagram, and spoke about the struggle to feel accepted as a young girl who was not considered beautiful.
She captioned this picture as:
“Blast from my past! For all the meme makers. Jokes aside I struggled so much with how I was judged then. So much pressure to look good and feel accepted esp as a teen! Even now after two kids and a husband who loves me just the way I am I have many moments of anxiety and struggle with how I feel about my body”
Society has set this perfect body type criteria that it associates with acceptance. In the struggle to being thin but not too thin, light-skinned, straight-haired, tall but not too tall, women go through low self-esteem, anxiety and even depression.
From a very young age, our looks become the criteria for acceptance and for that ‘attractive’ look, and many women succumb to anorexia, plastic surgeries, and many other things. Apart from that the ones who don’t fit in the stereotypes developed by society are ridiculed for their natural body.
It’s high time that the society understands that the problem doesn’t lie in the natural looks of a person; the problem is the mentality. The mentality that defines ‘beauty’ and ‘attractive’ in a very narrow and tight context. So rather than telling women to look a certain way, there is a need now that society changes its definition of ‘perfect and beautiful’. Because everyone is beautiful in their own way.
I read, I write, I dream and search for the silver lining in my life. Being a student of mass communication with literature and political science I love writing about things that bother me. Follow read more...
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Being a writer, Nivedita Louis recognises the struggles of a first-time woman writer and helps many articulate their voice with development, content edits as a publisher.
“I usually write during night”, says author Nivedita Louis during our conversation. Chuckling she continues,” It’s easier then to focus solely on writing. Nivedita Louis is a writer, with varied interests and one of the founders of Her Stories, a feminist publishing house, based in Chennai.
In a candid conversation she shared her journey from small-town Tamil Nadu to becoming a history buff, an award-winning author and now a publisher.
Nivedita was born and raised in a small town in Tamil Nadu. It was for schooling that she first arrived in Chennai. Then known as Madras, she recalls being awed by the city. Her love-story with the city, its people and thus began which continues till date. She credits her perseverance and passion to make a difference to her days as a vocational student among the elite sections of Madras.
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