How body shaming breaks your confidence

By- Sakshi Bagri
GUWAHATI:Body shaming is quite common in schools. Body shaming is common and people at times don’t even realize that the person might get hurt and think that they are just joking. But there are also people who consciously fat-shame other people.

Two girls share their experiences of being body shamed.

Gauri Rishi, a 19-year-old residing in Delhi, shared her experience of being fat shamed throughout her school life. She was 12 years old when her classmates started commenting on her body and this constant verbal attack about how she looked began affecting her confidence.She was called names such as ‘hathi’, ‘cow’, etc.Because she was overweight, students did not want to befriend her. Though she had a close friend, but he would choose not to talk to her in the presence of other classmates.She said that he was embarrassed of being seen with her. She said, “He didn’t talk to me when others were around, he didn’t want to be seen with me.”

Not only peers or classmates can be insensitive to issues of body shaming, even teachers have made remarks on her physical appearance .She also shared an incident where her teacher said to her while she was eating that, “You are not going to lose weight by eating like that.” She didn’t like the comment made by her teacher as she was having a pretty decent meal. She was always stereotyped and people assumed that she could never participate in any kind of sports.

Kasturi Mazumdar, 19-year-oldwas called words like ‘moti’, ‘hathi’ and among others and she too was left out of sports or cultural activities because of her weight. She said “I remember being laughed at for dancing on stage or even if I fell down by chance while playing, I remember comments on my facebook posts and I also remember feeling terrible because school and social interaction in general during this time had become a nightmare.”

Gauri was able to build her confidence really quickly. Gauri said, “I watched a lot of videos about self love and became confident and I had a goal in mind to prove my classmates wrong, I didn’t let my weight describe myself. I started to like myself.” She went on to give a fitting reply to her bullies by winning awards in football and hockey and proved them wrong.

Kasturi talked about how her bullies affected her, she said, “Till date I cannot eat one whole meal without feeling guilty later. No matter how much I try, I cannot surpass the constraints of weight and constantly keep a check on how much I have eaten every day. It has absolutely crushed my confidence but I am hopeful for a better future as I am working on myself and my goals.”

Gauri didn’t tell anyone about her bullies at school and found a way to deal with them herself. Kasturi initially did not tell anyone but later gathered the courage to talk about it. “I have had conversations regarding this with multiple people which have ultimately helped me in understanding that not everybody associates a person with their weight completely.” Kasturi added.

A psychologist said that body shaming can really affect someone’s confidence. She said, “They may think it’s their fault that they are overweight and may stop eating. There have been many cases like these; it can affect the person’s health.”
The story first appeared in The Times of Bennett, the lab newspaper produced by the first semester students of The Times School of Media.
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