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Results of Celebrating Myself, the Women's Web and Zivame International Women's Day Contest
On the Women’s Web – Zivame Celebrating Myself contest, we got to see women celebrating the best in themselves. Now, the results!
March has been a fantastic month. A month where we got the chance to see many of our readers celebrating themselves. Too often, we women dismiss ourselves, sound modest, act harsh on ourselves – believe that we are after all, only ordinary women. Not this time! We had women writing and celebrating themselves for their courage, their wit, their careers, for being mothers and daughters, for triumphing over tough circumstances, for being fearless, lively, patient, understanding – in other words, for being who they are.
We loved reading all your entries, and our sponsors Zivame will be giving away a Rs.250 voucher to every entry. But, here are the big winners!
The first prize goes to Suranga for her entry, Cerebrating Myself. “Celebrations, slowly ceased to be about acquiring things, like objects of leisure and the good life, and became more about giving and participating and not worrying about who thought or said what of you”, she says, and we totally agree. Suranga wins Rs.2500 worth of free shopping at Zivame, plus a coffee mug from us.
Now, the five 2nd prizes, and these go to:
Scribble Happy for her entry on respecting and loving herself for what she is. She says, she celebrates herself by “refusing to chase the chimera of eternal youth. Basically, by treating my body with the respect it deserves and not subjecting it to absurd expectations and comparisons.”
The Hip Grandma who celebrates herself for excelling at her work despite the hurdles, and with the support of her family. “I managed to top my batch and break a twenty one year old record and I hear that my record remains unbroken till date.” Bravo!
Shail who managed to make it just in time, and who believes that she has always been celebrating herself “..in spite of the pessimistic and non-nourishing state I found myself in time and again..”
Rinzu Rajan who celebrates her becoming a feminist, saying, “The dainty damsel had to transform from here on to celebrate the F word. I knew I had to take charge of my life.”
R’s Mom who has a simple but heart-warming entry on feeling low and picking herself up on the realisation that, “I am content with the way my life is now. No matter how much I crib about my weight gain or my lack of sleep, if someone asked me what more do you want in life, I would have nothing to answer.”
These five winners get a Rs.500 shopping voucher from Zivame and a coffee mug from us too.
We’d like to thank every single one of you who participated (do look for your vouchers soon at the email ID you have entered here) and we would especially like to thank our two judges, authors Annie Zaidi and Gita Aravamudan who were gracious enough to spare their time and go through the entries!
p.s. We hope all our readers will also go on to read all the entries and share the celebration. You can find the entries in the comments section of the contest page.
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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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