“There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
If like me, you are a social networking fan and spend a significant amount of time on various social media platform, it is hard to ignore the current discourse around the issue of body image and body politics. Numerous pages and websites are devoted to this issue which talks about the “Real Woman” and her body measurements. Each site talks about a specific set of body size that defines a “Real Woman”. If you are a woman and you do not fit the standard set by these advocates of positive body image, you are disqualified from being a real woman.
Who is this elusive real woman?? If it’s not you or me or the glamorous woman in the recent blockbuster, who is she? Let’s explore a bit and begin the quest of finding her. Shall we? A few years back when the glamour industry around the world became obsessed with Size “0” and started placing extremely thin female movie starts/ models, etc. on a pedestal and portraying them as having the ultimate body one can aspire to have. It lead to a very unhealthy trend of women starving themselves in order to achieve those impossible proportions. Young girls started falling prey to illnesses like Bulimia and Anorexia. Every woman who was not Size “0” or a few kilograms under-weight was called “fat” and ridiculed for eating even a slice of apple pie ( Oh the sinful food with so many calories packed in) . If you were not counting every calorie you took, you were not a health conscious person.
It is this negative environment that led to groups of women advocates for “positive body image” and talking about the so-called “Real Woman”. Slogans like “Real men like curves, only dogs go for bone” started making its rounds of various social media platforms including Facebook. Did you realize what I just wrote? Read again. I compared women to bones! Moreover I inexplicably linked the body image of a woman to what a man likes. I just endorsed the age old patriarchal belief that a woman’s identity right down to how she looks is dependent on how a man views it.
A movement that started with a positive motive to portray the average woman as beautiful as any thin movie star has turned into reverse discrimination against thin women. When it comes to body shapes, hypocrisy runs deep. It’s been engrained into our minds that it is not “polite” to call a fat person fat, but what happens when you see a thin person? Unsolicited advise on how they should eat more to uncharitable and downright rude comments like“ Oh you are just a bag of bones” are thrown your way. Has it ever crossed the minds of such people? Just like an average person (or even a fat one) does not stuff themselves continuously with calories , a thin person does not deliberately starve herself to death. The thin woman may just have a high metabolic rate. Just because a thin woman refuses to eat a piece of chocolate cake, don’t attack her for promoting unhealthy body image, she may just have a very bad set of teeth.
People come in all shapes and sizes, apple shape, pear shape , straight as a banana and beanpole. If the world has all kinds of people in it, how can only apples and pear be “real” but not bananas and beanpoles. In an attempt to create an all-inclusive environment where people are respected regardless of what their body size is, there is an attempt to systematically exclude the group that does not conform to the body image norms dictated by the prevailing school of thought. What difference are we then making to the “weight obsessed” mentality of an average person. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. We are just substituting one group with another and continuing to discriminate.
Fat shamming or skinny shamming are not two dramatically opposite poles. They are a continuum of a culture that constantly tells woman what is wrong with them while ridiculing them for the “lack” thereof. Women need to embrace their bodies, just the way they are: thin or fat, smooth or scarred. Pitting one body size against another will only lead to disempowerment of women which will achieve nothing. Some women are always going to be curvy and some skinny. Be proud of who you are and if your body frame changes a few months/ year down the line, accept it with as much grace and dignity as you have accepted the present form.
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