DISCLAIMER: Contains No preservatives…No added flavours…Just added Fa(c)t [of random thoughts!]
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
WRONG!
Beauty lies in mass appeal.
Then again it’s the MASS that’s APPEALING or rather APPALLING to the eyes for reasons not so aesthetic.
With the likes of recent incidents on targeting celebrities connected to the world of entertainment, it seems the very purpose of entertainment has added a new “Weight” of ridicule being labelled to its cause where it’s ok to have WEIGHT in your words but when it comes to body, WEIGHT and watch!
“Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction,” so says an online dictionary.
Well, Fat people are subjected to an “experience of pleasure or satisfaction” (in the form of ridicule) by the same people who came up with this definition, so why aren’t they considered objects of beauty? (They fit in perfectly well in the category as per the definition anyway) Why such hypocrisy? Why this Kolaveri Di?!
Society has this inherent quality of criticising – for being too fat or too thin, being employed or unemployed, being married or unmarried…the list never ends! There just HAS to be SOMETHING WRONG with you! After all Nobody’s perfect right?
For me, that “something wrong” was my weight.
It’s like a part of a PACKAGED deal, being subjected to silly taunts and ridicule comes with being fat- every Sonam Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Queen Latifa, Adnan Sami , even a former Miss World has to go through the PAIN GAME. “But as long as people love you for who you are, who cares!”
WRONG AGAIN
As long as you can be strong enough to answer back like Adele’s “I sing for the ears NOT for the eyes”, or to crack jokes on yourself like a certain Bharti, can one truly survive.
I’m a Punjabi girl and being a foodie is an inherent trait. I rather die eating Pizza than eating nothing at all. I always believed that true beauty encompasses things beyond sight or touch, something within---the light of the soul. Therefore being bred on movies like Beauty and the Beast, Shallow Hal, Shrek, I didn’t find my 93 kilo body posing a problem, at least not initially. Little did I realise later on that most fairy tales have much more under the façade of a "HAPPILY EVER AFTER!". It's always the Prince who has to be poor, ugly, fat, geeky or a frog (I pity the men folk on this) while the Princess has to be beautiful, slim, trim and perfect-- doesn't matter if she's a poor servant or a mermaid!
Being FAT was never easy especially if you have a beautiful mother. Ask me!
From teachers in school, to relatives, to friends, I used to hate being compared. It’s not that I’m not proud of my mother, of course I am. But I did have a problem with people resorting to comparisons than accepting dynamism.
I never learnt how to swim. I’m hydrophobic but most importantly, it’s the fear of wearing a costume and being ridiculed that stopped me from entering the pool.
I feared gym, doctors and health clinics, only because I knew that standing on that scale is my passport to more ridicule or taunts.
There was always an unwanted consciousness whenever I went out to eat. In most cases people judge you by your eating habits. Fat people have an exception. It doesn't matter how they eat! what matters is what they eat and how much! There's a sort of assumption that Fat= Glutton.
You stand at a fast food joint people assume you'll order the entire menu! Go to any wedding receptions or buffets and the caterers assume that you are bound to take multiple helpings and give you such a look that forget food you'll think you've murdered somebody by picking up that one extra piece of salad!
You run on the road, people start making weird all faces and shower nasty all comments.
Oh GOD! What kind of creature is that!
Run for your lives or you'll die in the Earthquake!
When it comes to compatibility and love, I have rarely seen love stories being complete where the fat falls for the good looking and its reciprocated because obviously people ASSUME (and make an ASS of U and ME) that fat people don't believe in Love or Compatibility. Everyone is busy preoccupied with that PERFECT wedding picture. Who cares about exceptions?!
As much as I loved outings, I feared family gatherings where another aunty (it’s always the aunty never the uncle) would go up to mom and publicly talk about my weight in such a “concerned” tone that would even make a cat think twice before killing a mouse .
“Arre yeh toh pehle se kinni moti ho gayi hai, usko exercise kara… khana kam kara”(“She’s put on more weight than before, reduce her food get her to exercise)!
"Beta look at your mother, even at such age, she has maintained herself so well!Learn something from her!”
“Well Good Morning! I know this all too well, Come on I live with her! And most importantly she’s my mom! At least don’t embarrass her!” ---- I always wanted to say that but realised that the society which ridicules also teaches us respect! (Bloody Hypocrites!)
They say being comfortable in your skin is the key solution to ALL your body issues, but for fat people, your skin becomes a curse, a constant method of living in fear and taunt and so you have no option but to get rid of it. Its like being forcefully kicked out from a pent house to live on the streets for no fault of yours if you ask me!
I'm NOT promoting FATNESS but just making you realise how equally torturous the life of the Larger frame really is, not because one is fat and unhealthy…it’s ONLY about BEING FAT!
To please myself (by pleasing others..like I had a choice back then!) I tried everything, from crash diets, to protein supplements to slimming centres. A friend of mine used to tear pictures of models out of magazines and tape them to her wall. She said it gave her“inspiration” to work out and look good, and that resorting to this would help me lose weight. But how inspiring could it be, I wondered, to surround yourself with pictures of people you could never actually look like? (At least, not without surgery, or an airbrush on photo shop !)
It’s sad but the concept of beauty is usually discussed within the wider consideration of aesthetics.
Flip through any fashion magazine, one is bombarded with images of attractive men and women wearing, or rather not wearing any clothes. The models on the ramp with “PERFECT” washboard abs, flawless skin, the fact that they can fit into anything and look VAVOOM is pretty much what attracts the non-green grass on the other side.
Women have always wavered to whatever the media of their time viewed beauty. In ancient times, beauty envisaged a healthy body to be able to meet vital needs.Therefore women with wider hips and heavy breasts were considered perfect and beautiful.
Botticelli's painting of 'The Birth of Venus' for example, depicts beauty as a woman with porcelain fair skin,long wavy blond hair and a voluptuous lower half, alluring men with the promise of fertility. Today the same woman in the painting maybe perceived as someone with a lack of muscular form, someone with generous thighs and love handles. In other words, Venus would be viewed as plus size icon by today's standards.
But then again, must art be beautiful to be great art? What about the rest of us? Is beauty just an obsession? Or is there a deeper meaning behind our drive to appear younger and more ‘beautiful’? If you ask me, it’s the latter, where we leave no stone unturned to be one of ‘them’, but the more important question is - Am I doing this for them or for ME?
Current runway models get skinnier while designer labels cater for the tall and thin and women put themselves through various forms of torture to look like their favourite celebrity. The designers may flaunt their collection on stick figures, but their consumers are NORMAL people, as NORMAL as those surviving on home cooked food, those on a regular vocational routine…. those like YOU or ME!
Don’t believe me?
Do give it a keen eye during the SALE period and witness for yourself how the M,L and the XL’s fly off the shelves first and how the S and XS stay on XS-ively!
But such is life. When we don’t feel comfortable in our natural bodies, we deny our spirits everything… from dancing to delicious food. We miss out on all the sensuality and joy that life offers.
We deserve to have it all! It doesn’t matter if you are FAT or thin.
People ask me why I resorted to losing weight when I didn’t have an issue with my weight in the first place! (Funny things with people I tell you—you don’t change they have a problem, you change they still have a problem!)
I did it because I WANTED TO, not because I was forced! It’s my life for God’s sake, You can’t help improving it, don’t destroy it!
It’s only when YOU start loving yourself, when YOU start living for yourself,when YOU resort to change without being pressurised and when looking at YOURSELF in the mirror will soothe YOUR eyes is when YOU are truly at PEACE!
Perceptions are subjected to TIME just like everything else. So if a Asha Parekh, or a Silk Smitha bring an appeal to the curvy heavy hips and a Kareena snatches the lime light with Size 0, a Vidya Balan brings the oomph on voluptuousness back!
TONGUES and TAILS WAG! And will keep on doing so! WEIGHT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT! Anant Ambani is laughed at for his Body, he’ll have the last laugh on your bank Balance! BIG DEAL!
I REPEAT MYSELF when I say I’m NOT promoting heaviness but just making one realise how resentful and torturous the life of the larger frame really is! They aren’t aliens from another planet, they’re HUMANS and one has no right to subject them to any form of ridicule whatsoever! There's a reason why we aren't super heroes/heroines. God made us differently. Yet conceit leads in people in believing to be Perfect! GET REAL GUYS! Perfection is a myth!
So if you can’t be PERFECT, be an excellent example of Being HUMAN! --- if not pounds, you’ll surely GAIN respect!
FOOD FOR THOUGHT!
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