FAT OR FLAT?

BODY IMAGE ISSUES AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM.

I sat by the window in the room, the sunlight spilling in through the glass and hitting my face.

I was holding my tablet and taking a BuzzFeed Personality Quiz.

Addictive, I must say. I was so into these quizzes that I never realised how much I learnt about myself through them. I loved it!

They explored different parts of me and somehow told me certain things about myself that j related to so well. This was my personality.

The person that I am, my personal characteristics, my little quirks, my way of doing things just how I liked them!

“Soorat Bhi, Seerat Bhi.”

This was something I heard a lot growing up.

I was thin and had a dusky skin tone. Now, we’ve all heard about the struggles people go through with accepting their bodies and what most people don’t realise is that no matter how much people speak about body positivity, nobody is truly happy with their bodies.

Curly-haired people want straight hair.

Straight haired people want curls.

Skinny people want to be curvy.

Curvy people want to be skinny.

The amount of importance given the kind of bodies we have is outrageous.

It’s like people almost fail to recognise that they are Human Beings and that goes beyond their body type.

Being a girl I have always been very insecure about my body.

I have always been asked to either eat more or to apply a hundred products on my skin because I was skinny and dusky.

I started believing that it’s how beauty works.

The only reason I was truly dissatisfied is that I let people’s opinions get to me.

I let them decide how my body is supposed to look instead of embracing how I truly look.

You see, as a society, we have set certain stereotypes.

We have romanticised the idea of being skinny or curvy according to a girl or guy’s body.

We have told men that they have to be tall, muscular and handsome and we’ve told girls that they have to be a size 0 and white and beautiful.

We try to demean any other body type.

We reject everyone who decides that they want to stand out and do something different.

We deny them the privilege of accepting themselves and being happy with how they look.

Trust me, it’s not just one or two people- every single person’s greatest insecurities arise from the way they look.

The biggest fear someone has is that they will be rejected for someone better looking, someone who fits society’s definition of a perfect body.

 

And this is awful.

This needs to STOP.

The greatest influence on body image is that of social media. Social media has created such a rampage and has literally dehumanised every single person down to just their body types.

We critique ourselves and push ourselves further down this rat hole of body image issues because people have told us that we are not good enough.

We hate our bodies. We diet and punish ourselves to be a size 0 because someone commented “fat” on our picture.

We watch the Kardashians and see Kylie and her perfectly contoured face and her perfect body and convince ourselves that if we do not look like that, we simply aren’t beautiful.

We don’t allow our hearts to give any kind of love to our bodies. We have all the possible acceptance for others, but none for ourselves.

It is heartbreaking to see so many people being so shy and so insecure because they have been given an outrageous idea that they aren’t good enough unless they don’t have a thigh gap.

Hip dips? Nah! Unacceptable.

And my only question is, WHY?

 

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WHY MUST WE DEFINE OUR WORTH UPON HOW SOME BUNCH OF STRANGERS SEE US?

Why do we not treat our bodies like the temple that it is and embrace ourselves just the way we are? It is because of these revolting stereotypes created on social media by other people with the same amount of spite and hate within them regarding themselves.

The amount of amazingly talented people I know, who face insecurities, fear, depression just because of their body image issues is insane. People tend to lose confidence self-esteem and start viewing themselves to be useless.

They lose every single shred of Self-confidence and self-love within them because of some random people who aren’t gonna matter in a few years or in some cases, from their loved ones who have invested their lives in conforming to the most horrendous societal norms of having the  so-called “perfect body.”

This kind of mentality has serious problems and causes major mental health issues. Losing your own sense of self-esteem and self-confidence is the worst thing that can happen to somebody. It literally makes you drag yourself through the mud and makes you bring yourself down to nothing.

 

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How must you deal with this?

Someone once told me, “If you don’t love yourself, you will never be able to completely let someone else love you.

Because hell! If you can’t love your own self, why must someone else?”

This is something that has stayed with me and will stay with me forever.

This one statement has got me through some of the hardest nights of my life when I cried because the boy I liked picked someone prettier than me.

What did I do? I cried it out of course. But after my wallowing session, I realised that the people who view you for just the way you look are the people who aren’t meant to be in your life in the first place.

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You are more than your body.

You are a person. A person with hobbies, interests and ideas.

You have thoughts and you have your little flaws and imperfections.

You have your own unique brain and mindset and these are the things that set you apart from the crowd.

These are the things that make you, YOU.

And oh, you are lovable.

So instead of focusing on which diet plan to choose, look in the mirror and say I LOVE YOU to yourself first today, because you are amazing – just the way you are.

Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.