It’s International No-Diet Day. Yes, there is an actual day to celebrate all body types and challenge body standards glorified by popular culture all around us.
Have you ever, in your frantic existence on Earth, deliberated over dieting?
A lot of you might reply with an emphatic yes.
“Thoda weight lose karlo, ladki waise toh sundar hai.”
“That double chin is horrible.”
“Start dieting dude.”
Fat shaming and body image issues have been propagated not only by those neighbourhood aunties we all detest meeting. Popular culture imagery has lent its hand too. And body shaming is not a mere “girls” thing, men are victims of it too.
While the day was introduced as a way of initiating a public discourse on body acceptance and normalising body diversity, it also emphasises the unhealthy and often detrimental body ideals that are perpetuated by the media or otherwise.
Remember these?
Social media in the month of April was abuzz with women sharing photographs of the gap between their thighs, or the ability to fit an iPhone between their legs as a way of indicating how ‘skinny’ they are, often synonymous with the ‘perfect’ body. Body shaming, overnight, became viral, and that is problematic.
It wasn’t too long ago when clinically significant eating disorders like Anorexia and Bulimia gained validation as legitimate ways of staying ‘fit’, also reinforced, in part, by some fashion models.
The body can be a site for both personal and political narratives and while the choice to look the way one wants is an individual one, there is a problem with the larger framework of beauty/body standards that women impose on themselves.
Off late, celebrities have been openly encouraging the acceptance of all body types.
Bollywood celebrities like Vidya Balan, Huma Qureshi and Sonakshi Sinha have been mauled, trolled and abused on social media for their body types. Rising above the butt of body-shaming jokes, these women have made it clear: Their bodies, their business.
It’s probably not cool to idealise a particular body standard and shun the way you look.
It’s probably not alright to stop eating food, diet for days, because it might make you feel in control/beautiful/perfect while you are dieting – the larger repercussions can be unhealthy.
And it’s definitely not okay to dismiss and shun anybody who does not prescribe to a given body ‘type’. And this applies to humanity, irrespective of gender.
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