A family friend said I’d put on weight. My reply left her gobsmacked

‘She won’t be able to learn to drive unless she exercises’.

This cruel comment, about my weight, really hurt. 

Believe it or not, this was something an elder member of my family said about me, in my own house, when my mother mentioned that I was about to start practising with a driving instructor.

In his eyes, a plus-sized person was incapable of doing or learning anything that requires hand-eye coordination. Whether this was prompted by a lifetime of seeing plus-sized characters as clumsy clowns on screen or by the ridiculous notion that being fat is a ‘personal failing’ is anyone’s guess.

I was not just angry and upset but also momentarily dumbfounded as I wondered how you even begin responding to something like this. 

This person does not let any occasion pass without a remark about my weight – and he is just one of the many people I encounter regularly who assumes my size is a topic that is always on the table.

From a family friend who began a conversation by saying, completely unsolicited: ‘I can recommend a really good diet to you’ (he was not a doctor or dietician, by the way), to a flatmate who unflinchingly said ‘stop eating that ice cream!’ (and was dumbfounded when I asked ‘why?’), I have seen and heard everything that is possible to hear about my weight.

And I am done.

I am done with the misogyny that gets extended to me and other happy, healthy plus-sized women who are not spending their time worrying about how to meet the beauty standards prescribed by the patriarchal society. Women who are no longer controlled by the male gaze.

And I’m done, not just with people who tell me that I’ve gained weight, but also with those who congratulate me for losing it.

In the past I have struggled with an eating disorder, scared of a few bites of food, as people cheered me on. But it is just as frustrating to hear someone say ‘you’ve lost weight’ as a compliment as it is to field their rude, nonsensical comments when I am at a higher weight.

How could they compliment me for not eating anything with vitamins or nutrients when I was thin, when their excuse for body shaming me when I was fat was that they were worried about my ‘health’? 

I have even heard people say that reducing your weight can magically cure your anxiety!

Attributing weight to health is an easy way to get away with making fatphobic comments. 

I will believe that reasoning when I see the same people ask conventionally attractive people if they are eating enough greens.

Even if I were to entertain this argument for a second, my question would be: when did an individual’s health become something that we shame them for?

I remember a school assembly in which a teacher asked all the ‘healthy’ girls (in India ‘healthy’ is often used as a euphemism for ‘fat’, which is so ironic given what was to follow) to step out of the lines so she could embarrass them on the microphone in front of the whole school by talking pointedly to these girls about obesity.

This would never happen for any other ‘health concern’ because no other ‘health concern’ is considered a personal failing.

I often wondered in those moments – what makes someone so comfortable commenting on women’s bodies at all?

The message of ‘you aren’t good enough unless you fit in a particular idea of beauty’ comes to girls and women everywhere, all the time from people and the media.

From slimming teas that give you diarrhoea, to models on Instagram who tell you how to wear clothes to hide the curves of your body, every single thing sends a message saying your body is a problem to solve.

And it can come closer to home, too.

At my parents’ 25th anniversary about a year ago, a family friend felt it was very necessary to walk towards me and my mother to inform me that I had put on weight.

On this occasion, I did not skip a single beat and managed to smile back and say, ‘what an unimportant thing to notice!’

She, of course, was dumbfounded at that moment though my mother later told me that I should have responded more ‘respectfully’. I told her that I do not agree – my reply was exactly what was needed at that moment.

And that is what I am going to be saying to everyone going forward, because my body is not a topic to debate over. 

It is the wonderful, beautiful vessel that I use to move through and interact with this world and I choose to love every bit of it no matter what I’m doing – including driving, obviously.

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