Do Women Have to Be Thin to Be Beautiful?
“You have to eat otherwise you will just waste away”, said my doctor. I stood their smiling as if nothing had happened. My husband, stared at me, trying to say that if I don’t get my acts together he will have to take charge.
I was taken to the doctor after a spell of dizziness and weakness. I had gone on one of those crash diets to lose my belly fat; my body had other plans and refused to cooperate. You see, after my wedding I put on some serious weight and looked like a sack of rice in a saree. When I looked at the mirror I saw a person who is fat and ugly. For years, the image of beautiful woman for me was the one with flat stomach and toned body, someone like Madonna or Jennifer Lopez. The tabloids, fashion magazines all advertised that if you are not thin enough you are not good enough. That was my truth and I decided to act upon it. I began by skipping breakfast, and then lunch and then dinner.
My body just gave up because without food it could no longer function, it just shut off. I never saw this coming, for me not eating was the way to get thin, get beautiful and be desirable. Luckily for me, I had my husband made me realize the mistake I had made. The mistake of judging myself based on images of actresses and models. I had failed to realize that for them it is part of job to look thin, sexy and glamorous. I am a writer, why the hell would I want to starve myself to look like a model? Yes you have to maintain a healthy weight for good health, but I was a 5 feet 3 inch woman weighing 118 pounds, I was not fat enough to risk my health. Still the image I had in my mind, the notion that you have to look a certain way made me forget all about health and compelled me to take extreme steps to achieve that image.
Sadly this self-imposed starvation has become an every day reality for many women and girls. They try to achieve that perfect body, that perfect image. The media relentlessly promotes the idea that thin means sexy and fat means ugly and bad. We try to act on information by the media because if we do not we are left out, we are judged as if we commit some crime by not confirming to the standards of beauty set by the celebrity and media culture.
It is up to women to understand that being different is ok, being heavy is ok (do not ignore your health though), no one will come and tell you that. Don’t wait for the society to accept you the way you are unless you do it yourself.
