I like going for walks and dunking my head in cheese.

If you keep nagging

About my weight

Your rapier tongue

May seal your fate.

-          -Joyce Guy

Have you ever sat around women without hearing the words ‘fat’, ‘thin’, ‘perfect’ and ‘beautiful’? If you are thinking about it right now, then all I can say is ‘Ha!’  If you sit at a coffee shop with friends,  the conversation will eventually steer towards the supposed imperfections that we all have. If you go for a wedding, you will be greeted by older women  commenting on your loss or gain of weight; a subtle indication of how many gulab jamoons you should or should not be eating at the wedding. I dread going to parlours the most. The idea of going to a place where I am told by total strangers that I require (urgently at that) a hair spa, a wine facial, a pedicure or the new aloe vera wax (that costs more than a Hersheys chocolate syrup) angers me. The women at the parlours who give me unsolicited advice get cold looks in return. From their puzzled faces, I gather that they just cannot understand why. After all, they are only helping me look better, right? It upsets me even more when I realise that their words have had an impact on me, proud and unaffected  as I believe myself to be, when I realise that I am standing in front of a mirror and wondering if I really should get that facial or hair spa someday. Ah, I’m also falling into the trap of those evil marketing strategies that have lowered my self-esteem and successfully made me a more conscious and less confident human being.

 The body of a woman, constantly under scrutiny and forever being shaped to societal preferences is not a personal body. It is not a body that belongs to the woman for the simple reason that she does not take care of it the way she may want to. She may just want to keep eating her chocolates and cheese. She may like those curls on her head or that little spot on her chin. She may not care about those broad shoulders. However if you look around you, you will find that women are’ too fat’ or ‘too skinny’, their broad shoulders need to be hidden or they must wear clothes that accentuate their shoulder bones, they are ‘too tall’ and ‘man-like’, or ‘too short', 'too fair’ (not so likely) or too dark (very likely). The list goes on and on. The ‘perfect body’ does not exist. In fact, it never did. At every stage of evolution, the definition of that perfection has itself been subject to constant change and we find hundreds of women at that stage moving towards an idea and not a reality of perfection. We all seem to exist in a particular way not because we want to but because we have to. In fact, expectations are even larger for women who are ‘perfect’- a tiny pimple or a discernable stomach will cause a panic attack and send them fleeing to the skin doctor/ gym. We are an unsatisfied group because we are conditioned to be unsatisfied. Even if a woman is satisfied and happy with herself and the way she looks, someone will come along to cruelly burst that bubble. I have stood in front of that mirror many times and smiled at the reflection there only to critically assess it later because of something someone said. And this is what this note is all about. 

For a scrawny teenager who never grew, I can tell you that the number of comments I’ve received about my weight and looks could challenge the total amount of entries on a twitter account. I have been a thin person all my life. I was a chubby little kid until three and then miraculously I became thin. I never put on weight after that and no one knows why. While some people think it’s a blessing, others always taken it upon themselves to self-righteously give me advice on how to gain those extra kilos. The second lot (most people I know) unfortunately start with my family and friends. The beauty parlour ladies enter a little later into the picture. Exchanging ‘pleasantries’ during a family function means hearing ‘Goodness, WHY have you lost so much weight?’, ‘You HAVE to put on weight, eat properly!’, ‘Oh, I remember you were healthy earlier...ha ha ha!’, etc.  It’s amazing that once people are done with their personal observations, they have nothing more interesting to ask! When I try explaining to them that I have not lost weight and that I am perfectly healthy (I thought that was important?) they beg to disagree. They take it upon themselves to fatten me up just that night by heaping my plate with enough food to feed about 10 starving children. When I stare helplessly at the mountain of rice on my plate, I become audience to another lecture. (Once someone even went to the extent of telling me how it was important for me to put on weight so that I won’t have problems when I bear children!) I only wish that I had enough guts to tell them that they resemble The Hulk.

If families are like that, friends are no better. Friends insist on hearing ‘diet tricks’ when I have none. They turn a deaf ear when I talk about my superwoman metabolism and insist on knowing The Secret that never existed.  While I smile out of sheer frustration and often laugh it off, they also go on to admonish me for the things that I love doing.  ‘Why are you on a walk? How do you expect to gain weight if you keep walking?’, ‘Why do you dance?’ ‘Just sleep and eat cheese’, etc. It’s almost as though people have to feel apologetic to want to exercise!

If you look around you and envy that woman with larger breasts, that woman with the perfect  height, hair or eyebrows, think once more. Every woman out there in my experience has been told to change the way she looks by someone-known or unknown. The unsatisfied lot go about advising the rest of the unsatisfied lot so there really is no winner. If you really want to know how you feel about yourself, it’s perhaps best to ignore those comments. Look at that mirror, it will never lie.