I grew up with a brother 8 years older than me. Being teased mercilessly during my formative years, I developed a reasonably thick skin and learned to withstand personal remarks and criticism regarding shape, size, fashion sense, et el. However most people tend to be sensitive about remarks made regarding their weight, colour, size etc. Vidya Balan’s recent video resonates with a lot of people who truly suffer as a result of body shaming; the kind of size and colour shaming comments that they receive.
We cannot all be the same size or colour; we all come in various hues, shapes and sizes. Yet there is a certain homogeneity that is forced upon us when it comes to the ‘ideal of beauty’ or even what we consider to be ‘normal’. People are quite casual in the way that they criticise and even condemn those that they consider different than the ‘norm’.
Balan, in conjunction with Big FM radio, raises an important issue. In the internet age where people abuse others directly as well as anonymously, this is even more so.
The fact is that unthinking, casual comments made by people – about one’s colour, size, shape – can be hurtful in the extreme. It can cause serious damage to one's self-esteem and self-belief. Vidya Balan has herself been frequently trolled and publicly lacerated for not being one of the uniformly svelte, gym-bodies that have populated Indian cinema for years now. As such her view is seen as a personal one; born out of her own lived experience.
It isn’t just women, men are also body shamed. They may be shamed for being short or tall or thin or not thin. The shaming and harassment of men are often overlooked.
This comment perfunctorily acknowledges that ‘body shaming is unfair’ but then becomes an example of body shaming by using the word ‘fatsos’ and the thoughts it expresses. The problem with body shaming is that it is born out of ignorance and a lack of empathy. There are genetic reasons for the way we all look; there could be medical reasons why some of us carry extra weight. The point is that no one needs to be made to feel inadequate or guilty for the way they look. When people assume that a person is a certain size because they are lazy, this simply adds to the problem.
The video takes popular songs and substitutes the lyrics with relevant lyrics to convey how people are made to feel when they are body shamed for being too tall, not tall enough, too fat, too thin, too dark, too light-skinned, too whatever. We are invited to #DhunBadalKeTohDekho or to change our tune and to be a little more sensitive and empathetic, less callous and ignorant via this video.
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