What is wrong with me?
By Dona Cherian
My colour, my hair, my figure, and my feet — everything about my body has always been scrutinised and found wanting. As a teenager, I have always wanted to fit into the beauty standards set in society, Tall, shapely, long-haired, fair skinned — it doesn’t end, and every criteria that ‘they’ had, I didn’t fit in. And people didn’t ever shy away from telling me that I didn’t fit, and giving me free tips on how I could try to "look better".
One day, I was talking to a 10-year-old from church. She was participating in a dance competition and I got excited as I had been a regular dancer in school. She looked up at me with a strange look and said, “But how did you dance? You are fat! I don’t want to be fat.”
At that moment I wished “fat” wouldn’t be the obscene word that it had become. Far beyond the point where this could affect me personally, all I could think of was that at an age when she shouldn’t care about how anyone looks, least of all herself, she has an opinion about what “fat” people can or cannot do.
We are sick of it
Sick of people who think they have the right to fat-shame others. We are sick of hearing that a fat woman is not good enough. That she will never find a husband and that she has to change who she is to be beautiful.
Listen to find out what three feisty women had to say about the subject.
