Beauty
Embracing Self
Why must others judge her appearance and grace
When true beauty is not confined to a face?
In a world obsessed with the outer shell,
She knows in her heart inner beauty dwells.
By Shruti Sharma
October 19, 2023
Brushstrokes: Bodies, Beauty and Boundaries
Women’s bodies are considered as symbols of izzat and abru (honour and dignity) making it the woman’s responsibility to ‘protect’ her sexuality, while at the same time, her sexuality is controlled by patriarchs.
By Rinku
August 10, 2023
Editorial – The Body and Sexuality
Our most powerful, sexy, responsive and attractive sexual organ may be the mind, but it is through the body that we express and experience our sexuality. Our body is our first and primary home; whether we truly feel at home in it is another matter.
By TARSHI
June 16, 2023
A tempestuous affair
The simple truth is that my body and I are having an affair. We each obsess about the other, ask questions and desire each other so much, that it often borders on the shameless. My body is more in love with me, I suspect, than the other way around.
By Pramada Menon
June 1, 2023
June 1, 2023
Sins that can’t be washed away
Like some perverted Pavlovian desire,
the wafting smell of fresh soap
that fills up the air in the bath
has my pupils dilate when walking out.
By Hritvika Lakhera
June 1, 2023
Things other than maths I tried doing, and failed miserably
Waxing my body for the first time last year to have silky skin like the women on Veet’s box but ended up with rashes instead.
By Greeshma
TOGETHER, ALONE
It wasn’t that she had never heard of homosexuality; but, in her imagination, gay men and women were an exotic species, not real people who could, perchance, be fellow passengers on a bus, fellow shoppers at a mall, or a fellow beginner in a meditation class.
By Kaustav Bakshi
November 2, 2020
The Unlovable Love Handles
Each time I would look into the mirror, I would see the love handles bulging through my shirt and cringe inwardly. Mills and Boon had convinced me that my body was not loveable like that of the thin, beautiful protagonists, and thus, there would no knights coming for me on horses, now or later.
By Shivangi Gupta
December 3, 2018
Editorial: Beauty and Sexuality
Beauty gleams in unexpected places, but its effulgence turns to tawdry glitter when it is shaped and squeezed into form-fitting frames. Rigid ideas of what is beautiful or desirable can reinforce oppressive structures. However, when these concepts are more flexible they can be subversive as well.
By TARSHI
October 15, 2018
Bleached Girls: India and its Love for Light Skin
Bleaching syndrome is not a superficial fashion, it’s a strategy of assimilating a superior identity that reflects a deep-set belief that fair skin is better, more powerful, prettier. And it’s not limited to India; skin bleaching is also common in the rest of Asia and in Africa.
By Curated Content
October 15, 2018
Review: Lihaaf
A woman can be more than something that just exists in a marital home, a woman can be more than just a beautiful body used as a mere decoration in the household. Isn’t it high time we talked about the problems of the terminology used to define beauty and the association of it with sexuality if Chughtai tried doing this in 1941?
By Grishma Trivedi
October 15, 2018
Too Beautiful to be Faithful
“It’s fascinating Yasmina, but also scary how sex or sexualising something can be ignited from our need for beauty that probably stirs positive emotions that we consider beautiful, such as feeling pleasure. But you know as well, desiring what we think is beautiful can generate fluidity: I can never know what I am exactly. All I know is that I was with men, and I was with women, and all of them tickled something within me. “
By Abdullah Erikat
October 15, 2018
Shamed and Sidelined For Too Long, Plus-Size Women in Pakistan Are Now Speaking Up
“I realised plus-size acceptance is neither a movement to eat whatever you want nor is it about placing restrictions,” Amina said. “It’s about being kind to your body and realising you are not defined by the size of your waist.”
By Curated Content
Beauty Dictated; Beauty Discovered
Should we train it to think well, all these minds would see reason in similar things and they would come up with the same absolute reality – a universal Truth. That Truth would be a reflection of the Natural order for all humankind. That Truth alone would be beautiful.
By Shweta Krishnan
October 1, 2018