Losing the Weight of Other People’s Expectations of My Body

This new year, I want to lose the weight of other people’s expectations of my body. I am not writing this for sensationalism, nor preaching. I am writing this because I recently realised I am not alone in my misery. Many many women like me, around me seem to be struggling with body image issues. We all seem to have lost the ability to enjoy a heathy relationship with food. But then again what, if at all, is a healthy relationship when it comes to food? Does it exist? Are there some unicorns who actually have such a relationship while the rest of us remain unhappily ambivalent? The unbearable heaviness of breathing in a body that makes you feel wretched can be excruciating to carry. This letter is for my girls out there. I see you, I am you.

Instagram is awash with models with the perfect hourglass figure. With surfer abs. Toned arms. An exquisite thigh gap. But the thing is the average girl is average for a reason. And for once let it be said: There is absolutely nothing wrong with being average. Not all of us aspire to be models. We don’t have to. It is easier said than done that we shouldn’t compare ourselves with people who get paid to look the way they do. As I type these words I am aware of how hollow my words sound to me. If only I could absorb the meaning behind these words somehow by osmosis. All of us, women and men, seem to have perpetuated this myth. This unrealistic and absurd myth of fitness and beauty. Right from the beginning, as children, little girls are given Barbie dolls to play with. Perfectly proportioned Barbie dolls that have a cinched waist, perfect thin thighs and an appreciable ass. That image of who a grown up woman ought to look like is deeply embedded in our psyche virtually from infancy.

How did we reach here? When did we glorify being thin to the extent that at the ripe young age of 26 I panic with the thought of weight gain. And that is not it. We haven’t simply paused to reflect on why we have glorified slender bodies. There is a premium placed on lean arms, cinched waits and skinny legs. It’s unreal but it’s scary that it’s so real. When I look at a woman, I scan myself through her eyes. I wonder if she thinks I am as curvy as I think I am or maybe more. Writing this makes me nauseous. Because I am not only putting into print my deepest, most non-feminists thoughts but also admitting to being a pawn in the game of skewed gender stereotypes. It is easy to wax eloquent on the faceless misery that body shaming brings with it. But what no one tells you about living with space age technology is that there are facets of benign misogyny buried deep within us, so entrenched in us, with its fangs so deep, that it is easy to dismiss as mere insecurity. When I look in the mirror and don’t see what I like, I realise in that moment: I am a product of a hyper sexualised misogyny. The same trope has been peddled to us through cinema, art work, Instagram and Victoria Secret models.

Losing the Weight of Other People’s Expectations of My Body

A few days ago, when I was plagued by self doubt, I put up a post on social media asking women if they too were victims of what I call social media fat shaming. The sheer number of women who wrote back to me has given me much comfort and a sense of belonging. Almost like a warm hug. Like a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day. To say that navigating this world in the body of a woman is hard would be the biggest understatement of all time. Many women spoke of feeling incomplete until they had attained a standard of feminine beauty and their image resembled who a woman is supposed to look like. Others spoke about how social media had exacerbated their anxiety over body image issues. Many talked of how mindless scrolling through social media is like a dark, bottomless abyss of self hatred. Some spoke about how the inability to use make-up proficiently to cover acne or dark circles causes feelings of inadequacy. The women I spoke to talked about how you aren’t considered ‘acceptable’ enough until you have a clear glowing skin with a “no make up” look. Unknowingly, all these women echoed the same things: You are pretty as long you’re thin and fair and your lower belly doesn’t protrude out.

Image Credit: Samuel Zeller/ Unsplash

Statistics of number of young women and girls who suffer from Anorexia, Bulimia and other food disorders has been on a steady increase in the last few years. Surgical enhancement of breasts and bottoms; lip fillers and nose jobs are a means to an end to achieve an idealised notion of beauty. I am not against anything that makes someone happy about themselves but the pressure to correspond to society’s unrealistic, unrelenting, unflinching beauty standards is what bothers me. Yet, if one were to pause in using Instagram filters to make your lips look plumper, your eyebrows perfectly shaped or and your cheeks flawlessly contoured in stark contrast to what one looks like in real life is ample food for thought. The need to emulate what models look like when wearing your favourite brand by purging yourself of food and starving yourself; the desire to own abs like Kendal Jenner or at the very least a flat stomach like Ananya Pandey by eating only fruits and maintaining a liquid diet; the yearning to get a rhinoplasty because you loathe how your nose looks like in the mirror simply because it does not match any one of the women shown by the media — all this and more shows the fetishisation of abnormal standards of both beauty and fitness. Social standards, steeped in patriarchy, define beauty standards and it is these myopic societal standards that have successfully destroyed our self esteem. And until we fit a certain predefined standard of beauty, we, as women, don’t feel feminine enough.

There is a fine irony at work here: You open Instagram to distract yourself from the waves of self doubt. But social media ends up dwindling your self esteem, to the point of diminishing it altogether. You try to distract yourself by shopping for new clothes that fit you. But you’re hounded by pictures of petite women with a perfectly toned figure modelling for every dress you love. Imagine living every conscious, waking second in a body you detest. Imagine how tiresome and unpleasant that is. It is in that moment you realise you can’t escape this rut. This is a cycle with no end in sight. But Queen Daenaerys was right. We are going to break the cycle. So it’s okay if our clothes don’t fit us anymore. It’s okay if we don’t look like our younger selves. Our bodies are changing, evolving. Imagine how cruel we are to ourselves by being unhappy in the body we live in. I refuse to offer the use of make up or exercising to make ourselves feel better because it is the most over-simplified, opaque and condescending suggestion that goes not go to the root of the problem. Moreover, I am aware of the inertia and apprehension that many in my situation may feel in attempting to do either of these. But in the form of this article, this is me hoping and wishing we learn to unfreeze and unknot ourselves in our darkest, most insecure moments or (at the very least) remember how much our body does for us when we are falling to pieces, as fragmented as our thoughts.

Note: This article makes no attempt to offer condolences let alone solutions. This is from one sufferer to another. You are not alone. There are many who struggle everyday with how their body looks. To them, I say: I see you. I am you.

The views expressed are the author's own.