BODY OF WORK

Four women, spanning different generations, talk about their diverse body image journeys and the impact pop culture had in shaping their beauty ideals

- KONIKA DATTA

“We were getting ready for a pool party when I saw her wearing a pair of jeans. When I questioned why she wasn’t wearing something more comfortable for the occasion, she replied, ‘I have thick thighs, so I’m not supposed to wear a swimsuit, right?’ In that one second, I felt this huge burst of emotion, and I literally relived my entire childhood,” shares influencer manager Siddhi Pingle, 22, about her younger sister. Her sister’s negative perception towards her body, Pingle says, is coming from the constant body-shaming remarks both of them face from their parents. “My parents started putting a lot of pressure on me to look a certain way. I heard a lot of comments on how my thighs are too big, and how that extra lower belly shouldn’t be there,” she adds.

Out of all the socially imposed ideologies a woman unlearns throughout her life, body image ideals are the ones that take the longest to overcome. The fact that what we see in social media, movies, and shows has a way of shaping our beauty standards doesn’t help things either. Though there is now more representation of female bodies of all shapes and sizes on these platforms, the question worth asking is this: Are these shifting narratives in body image conversations impacting us at a grassroot level? Can they undo the deep conditioning we’ve all grown up with?

Four women who have grown up in different time periods with different sizes considered ‘normal’ share their journey with body image.

FITTING THE MOLD