Facebook banned ad showing a 'fat' girl: Women must get over body image issues

“I hate my lips.”

Those are strange words coming from a 19-year-old model that I shot with last Friday. She seems perfect in real life. Tall, fair-skinned, unblemished complexion, of a cheery disposition and am guessing, since she is pursuing sociology in one of the best colleges in Kolkata, with more than half a brain.

Later, we talk gyms because she isn’t too happy with hers and wonders if her arms are too fat. (They’re not.)

It isn’t coming from a bad place. It isn’t a sly way to dig for compliments or another way to look for validation. She seemed honestly worried because she’s considering a future in the glamour industry.

Then there’s my friend. A smart, beautiful, hardworking, F&B manager who’s just back from a wine tour in Italy. She complains about gaining a few pounds. If she has, I don’t see it.

Another friend who has just given birth to a baby boy, sees it differently. You’re fine, she tells me. “Look at me,” she says. As if delivering an entire human a week ago, and now feeding it, isn’t pressure enough on the body.

There’s my mother who is tired of wearing saris and salwars and is trying to figure out pallazos with a little help from me. I bite my tongue when I am about to tell her to not wear too short kurtas with it.

This woman has brought me up, juggling jobs, a husband, the demands of joint family, a terrible Tagore poetry addiction and a battle with cancer.

She deserves to wear what she likes (even though I might never forgive the poetry addiction).

I’m guilty too. After nearly six months of almost no workout, I am feeling quite hateful about all the weight I have put on - having lost those pounds only a year ago. (There’s also my acne-prone skin, but that’s a topic for another day.)

And then there’s Facebook. Banning pictures of people for being too fat. 

Out of them all, that was the lowest blow, I think.

Almost all women I know have terrible body image. We all think of ourselves as being too fat, too thin, too flat, too big, too much of anything and everything.

In Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, The Mad Hatter says to Alice, “You used to be much more... muchier. You've lost your muchness.”

Let’s all reclaim our "muchness" and cut ourselves a little slack.