To my body, something I refuse to be ashamed of anymore
Body-loathing is an easy thing to fall a prey to.
Through all of my seventeen years, I have always wanted to change something or the other about my body. I wished my hair was straighter. I wished I was a slender version of myself. I wished I had the cheekbones of X, the thighs of Y. No dark circles, no celluloid, no stretch marks. Just a tuck there, and a nip here.
Life would be wonderful if I was a perfectly assembled robot, with the ability to change anything about my physical appearance, whenever I wanted to.
Now, you can attribute my dissatisfaction with my body to my overly-critical nature. (if you know me, you'd know what i am talking about). But that isn't it.
I actually detested my body more than I detested my brains or my work. It was a conscious and continuous hatred. I couldn't help wanting better, wanting different. And I couldn't help being dissapointed when i couldn't have it.
In 2013,Taryn Brumfitt had decided that she was going to have a boob-job. She reveals how she had an epiphany, when she realized that she couldn't tell her daughter to be proud of all the bumps in her body without sounding like a hypocrite. So she decided to do the un-doable, that is, to start loving her body.
Today, she is planning to produce a documentary named EMBRACE, to encourage women to love their bodies and stop themselves from unconsciously accepting the commercial standards of beauty.
Just what went wrong with us? When did we become so terrifyingly thirsty for acceptance that we are ready to undergo the unspeakable to tame our dissatisfaction? Who drilled into us that we had to have flawless faces, hairless bodies and the perfect balance of curves and bones - whatever that means - in order to make peace with ourselves? And that, as women, we need to be "groomed" and "presentable" and "pretty" at all times?
Just numerous magazines and newspapers.Taglines that declared fair was lovely and thin was in. Most faces in the public eye, who gave out their diet plans and their secrets for the curves at the right places, with panache. And almost all faces in the public eye, who had long lashes and blue eyes and pearl-like teeth that we sighed over. People we laughed and dined and studied with, who were as insecure (if not more) as us, and who told us that beauty was a formula to be learnt and repeated.
And No one, absolutely no one, to say how beautiful and dynamic we are.
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| It really won't. So why care? |
Unlike Taryn, I did not have an epiphany. It is the summer before college, and I have decided to be proud of myself. And since my body is a large part of myself, I decided that i need to stop loathing and wishing and hating, and begin to love. I have come to realize that I don't owe it to the world to look someone's idea of pretty, but I definitely owe it to my body to stop the pulling, and nipping and tucking.
I have way too many insecurities, which make this journey a particularly hard one. And the magazines or the people are not going to go away. (Although there will be a particular kind of joy in telling people where to shove their ideas of beauty. Yes, you guessed right.)
But I will find a way to love all of me, with stubby nose and bruises and cellulite.
And at the risk of sounding cheesy, I will tell everyone I meet along the way that they are beautiful and lovable, exactly the way they are.
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