A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
The young Suchitra Sen – then plain Krishna Dasgupta – apparently once sat on a school bench and announced that she would be remembered long after her death. An ordinary middle class girl who was one of nine siblings, and an average student bereft of any artistic talent, all Sen had was her looks. But apparently, that was enough. “She was conscious of her great beauty… and behaved as if she… deserved every bit of the natural selection,” wrote Susmita Dasgupta in a thoughtful Facebook note.
No two human bodies are alike, and our different bodies arouse curiosity. But our fascination for the aesthetics of the perfect human body has historically created a space within art, science and religion for the examination of the ‘abnormal’ and the ‘imperfect’. As a result, some bodies are normalised while others become oddities.
Which one of these is the right question to ask myself: When was the first time I realised I was thin? Or, when was the first time I was made to realise I was ‘different’ and there was something wrong with me that needed to be fixed? Or, when was the first time I defined myself as a thin person and was comfortable being so?
Why do we always assume that violence is done to us by someone else and not that we do it to ourselves quite easily and then have a million explanations to justify why we do not eat, why we use Fair and Lovely face cream, why we spend hours in the gym under duress, and why we focus incessantly on how much one has gained or lost in kilos and not in a metaphysical sense?
Do you love your eyes and hate your knees? Or do you sometimes wish your XXX were different? Replace XXX with any body part of your choice. We have all been there – griping, never satisfied, and never owning our own beauty. How do we perceive and evaluate our own bodies? What do we love? What do we loathe? And why?