Sonam Kapoor has spoken and how! While many might feel that the actress was born with a silver spoon and had all the luxuries in life, the fact is even she was not spared off all the body shaming and taunts that many of us have to live with throughout our college years and, may be, even the rest of our lives.
In an essay to Buzzfeed India, the actress has busted the myths that are associated with the perfect beauty of celebrities. Just like any other teenager, Sonam, too, spent her teenage years as an unconfident, gangly teenager and found flaws in her body all the time.
"Like every girl, I spent many nights through adolescence leaning into my bedroom mirror, wondering why my body looked nothing like it should. Why does my belly crease? Why do my arms jiggle? Why am I not fair? Why are there dark patches under my eyes? Why am I taller than boys my age? Do stretch marks ever go away? Will this cellulite stay forever?," she writes.
Add to it the taunts and discourteous comments by relatives and her miseries increased manifold. “Itni lambi, itni kaali. Shaadi kaun karega?,” a relative once said to her.
Being a superstar was not easy
While she got he biggest break of her career by Sanjay Leela Bhansali in Saawariya, she was still worried how she would look on screen.
"I constantly worried that, if asked to dance in a backless choli, rolls of back fat would give me away as an imposter to the industry. Nobody lines up to buy tickets to see cellulite," she writes.
Sonam's career of being an actress lead to an obsession to lose weight and she started a series of unhealthy diet behaviour.
Continue reading on the next page to know the problems that Sonam Kapoor faced because of her serial diets!
"I dieted serially; sometimes South Beach, other times Atkins. Once, in desperation, I tried a diet that had me eating pineapples all day. I pushed myself too hard at spin classes, did power yoga for hours at a stretch, and developed an unhealthy relationship with food. Some weeks, desperate to drop a couple of kilos, I would simply not eat," she writes.
Her self-loathing didn't go away even after she became a superstar and she says that instead of loving herself she started getting new reasons to hate it.
A photo posted by sonamkapoor (@sonamkapoor) on
"Far from accepting my body once I was making a living as an actress, I was shown new reasons to hate it. Articles surfaced online, photos zoomed into my arms and thighs, red circles drawn around the slightest hints of a blemish. When I had a couple of movies out, Shobhaa De wrote a blog post saying that Sonam Kapoor “just doesn’t cut it in the sex appeal stakes”," she writes.
People even started calling her flat-chested and her C-cup was even discussed on National TV on the show Koffee With Karan.
What needs to be changed
"The rules of beauty are strict and it’s almost impossible to win. Anushka Sharma has been skinny-shamed, Sonakshi Sinha has been fat-shamed, Katrina Kaif has been fit-shamed. These are women who are and always have been staggeringly beautiful," writes Sonam.
However, there is a solution and the people who can bring about a change our the women itself, says Sonam. She says that in all these years, her female friends, Namrata Soni and her sister Rhea, have stood by her and helped her deal with all the body shaming.
"The problem is in mainstream culture’s rigid definitions of female beauty. The solution, for me, has been in the women I know. It’s been a decade since I entered the film industry with my awful self-esteem in tow and, thanks to the female support I’ve had throughout, that self-esteem is in a healthier place now. All the women who’ve championed me have taught me that kind, genuine support can change your friend’s or sister’s or colleague’s life," she writes.
A photo posted by sonamkapoor (@sonamkapoor) on
Sonam's powerful message is for women to help each other out and lift each other in times of distress. That's how we can change the society and the rigid system.
"Think of how much better your day is when it starts with a compliment. Think of how easy it is to give that to someone else. Do it every chance you get," she sums up!
Also Read: Every woman must read Parineeti Chopra's message about body image
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