From being asked to wear black in order to look slimmer, to getting shamed for not looking feminine enough, women face body shaming from all direction. Be it family, friends or strangers on the Internet, no one thinks twice before sliding in some unsolicited advice towards one’s body.
Doing their bit to rid the society of shaming people, Gaysi Family has organised The Body And Beyond workshop taking up the task to de-stigmatise some words used to target people.
Designed keeping in mind the different triggers, moderator and communication associate Shruti Bhiwandiwala feels a conversation around body positivity will help participants to shed the prejudice and accept their body.
“Being an interactive workshop we’re going to focus on three specific areas in the first half, it will be mental attributes or mental triggers, verbal attributes and verbal triggers and physical attributes and physical triggers,” says Shruti.
The workshop aligns its agenda towards increasing one’s sense of accepting ones’ own body. “Everything that surrounds, or helps or deters in the way you treat your body from all these angles is what we want to discuss. And also think like, we cannot control how someone else looks at our body or feels about our body. What we can control is how we perceive our own body and how we treat it, whether it is from a health perspective or from the love perspective,” shares Shruti, who too has faced body-shaming all her life.
“I have been plus size most of my life, have been bullied and body shamed in my family, by my friends and I still am, to this day. It has only been with the help of friends and a therapist that I came to start owning my body and just be like f**k everyone. I’m wearing what I feel comfortable in and I think it looks good. That’s what matters,” she adds.
Although the Internet is filled with trolls who shame people with hateful words, Shruti informs that it’s the negative connotation that affects people psychologically. She says, “There is a lot of negative connotation associated with body verbiage, like when you think about it from a logical perspective. The word fat has so much stigma attached to it, but if you look at the basic etymological perspective it really is just the opposite of thin,” adding, “When you take the stigma away from the word, it’s just a word. The idea is to start learning how to take the stigma away from these things.”
Although on the surface it looks like a women’s issue, Shruti has a whole segment dedicated to the trans community. “If you have a transition, if you passed as someone you don’t identify with is difficult, because in your head you’ve accepted it and you have made it very evident. But when someone questions or challenges the identity you have chosen or the identity that you feel comfortable with, it becomes very frustrating and demoralising.”
Being born in a different body and feeling you don’t belong can result in body dysphoria, and through the workshop, Shruti is trying to bring about a change in the thought process that would help participants take the issue forward and resolve it in their own way.
Apart from an interactive session, Shruti has also planned some activities that would encourage participants to dig deep and discover the prejudice they hold against their own body. One such activity includes, “Write or describe how you feel about your body and go around the room and have that conversation. Then find ways to replace the negative association we make with our bodies, with positive ones which reflect the same thing in less harsh perspective,” explains Shruti.
-The workshop will be held today at Levi’s Lounge, Mathuradas Mills Compound from 11 am
