Matters more than size!

Winters are known for hot chocolate, woolly socks and snuggly sweaters! Yes! But for some, winter comes with harshness, giving way to ailments of the body that many are unaware of! Psoriasis, is one such condition faced by a significant number of women and men in the country.

Shreeya Khade, the face of our body positivity campaign, writes about her experience with Psoriasis. During the onset of winter, she gets flares resulting in her skin to peel off making red patches on her limbs accompanied by soreness. But what pains her more than the condition is the way people react around her when they see the manifestations on the skin. She writes:

“The other day from the airport to my house, I had twelve people making faces looking at my hand, one of them sitting right beside me in the flight stared at my hand for about 10 minutes continuously and then asked her family members to look at it. Another one of them told me how burnt my hands looked with an expression of disgust on his face. This experience is one of my normal days. Most times my mind does not care about these comments, but sometimes my self-confidence breaks down in a hundred pieces and self-worth goes for a toss. I feel that someone has reduced me from a human being to a weird looking alien.”

Isn’t this feeling of lack of self-worth very commonly felt by women in everyday life? Body shaming is not only about being fat or not because even after that, you have a hundred other categories to fulfill! And this is when you are just trying to be a normal human being!

As a body positive influencer, Shreeya passionately stands for a change of attitude from those who are ignorant to the mental and physical health of other people. She writes

“I solemnly advocate that if you see anybody with any disorder or physical ailment, please don’t look at them in an obnoxious manner. It is new and different for you but stop staring at them, they know what it is and they are already struggling in their heads to carry themselves around in public, so please spare them some normalcy”.

We strongly support women like Shreeya and all those who have felt (or are made to feel) they don’t look physically attractive because of some or the other parameters – weight, skin tone, height, hair type, racial features etc. the list goes on. We end our body positive winter campaign on the note to celebrate imperfections! Because we are all imperfect in some way or other. Aren’t we?