Friday, August 12, 2016

It is just a body!

If you choose to, you can be a part of a number of experiences that contribute to the latest version of you that you might find a little more agreeable than the ‘you’ that you knew before. In my case one of these experiences needs a special mention because it played a significant role in how I feel about myself today.

"The Abstract Immaculate Conception of The Blessed Virgin Mary"
Since I can remember, I have always been the fat girl. Kinder and more sensitive people called me ‘curvy’, ‘voluptuous’, ‘Big Beautiful Woman (BBW?)’ and what not. So there, I was and am the fat girl who came to Europe with the baggage of body image issues that I had been carrying all my life. Initially after coming here, my dark skin and black hair made me an object of curiosity and many times, admiration. In addition to that, thanks to the kind of body-positive posts that I found circulating on Facebook in the last three years, I soon started to make it a point to look at myself in the mirror once in a while and tell myself “I am beautiful”. It worked for a while. Sometimes it still gives me a good boost. But telling myself that I am beautiful has largely been rendered pointless now because of this one experience that I had.

Many months ago four of us, two Indians, a German and a Czech woman  decided to treat ourselves to a spa weekend. Having only heard of such things in American series, I assumed that it would be a weekend of getting massages and drinking cocktails. However I was in for a rude shock. The first thing I learnt once I entered this spa resort is that it was a nude spa! Yes, you had to walk inside naked and no, it was not a spa just for women. Women’s spas apparently do not exist. So there I was facing the fact that I had a whole weekend ahead of me with the choice of either sitting in my hotel room the whole time or do what I had come there for. And this post would not have been written had I chosen to remain in the room.

In an interview that took place a year ago (14:00 onwards), Sonam Kapoor, who I think is way more interesting a person than the media portrays, said “I have a sense of modesty for sure but I wish I did not have inhibitions.” She went on to explaining why she thought clothing and covering oneself up curbs one’s freedom. Because the interviewer did not allow for this matter to be delved into further and responded to it in a rather shallow manner I was left guessing what Kapoor could have been getting at but if my hunch is right she was pointing to something very important. Perhaps what follows next will show what I mean.

There are many interesting things about being naked in public and I am going to list them down-

  • The shocking realization that I would be nude hit me in bits and pieces. First came the realization that I had to be naked. Second, I had to be naked in front of my friends. Third, which had not occurred to me till the moment when I had to shed clothes, was that there would be naked men around once I went out of the shower area. So I would be naked in front of them as well. As I mentioned earlier, besides me there was another Indian woman in the group. I am mostly city bred but she grew up in a village in a very closely-bonded community. To my surprise it was much easier for her to shed clothes than it was for me. It was not because I had much more of a body image issue than she did. She said it was okay for her to undress as long as there were only women around because that is how they did it where she grew up while simply changing clothes or bathing in their pond. As for me, I was brought up with the strictest notions of modesty. I do not wear sleeveless clothes, if a skirt is even a centimeter above my knee I do not wear it because, well, this sense of modesty has been deeply ingrained into my mind. So for all the times I thought women from villages were more modest compared to the city-bred ones, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Perhaps it is the typical middle-class mentally of ours where we find ourselves to be the upholders of “Indian culture” which instructs women on dressing modestly. At least that is how women in my community put it- we have to be decent because that is our samskruti. However, it is absurd to think that this is what Indian culture could be. I mean, I hear Indians saying all the time that we are very modest when it comes to clothing compared to western women and we say it with pride. Firstly, this is nothing to be proud of. Secondly, upper clothing for women was not even a thing in many communities in India till about a century ago. And there are a lot of centuries old reading material, literature, painting and even photographs that support this fact. This only means that we have been regressing for the last several decades. While the reasons for that, with some thought can be arrived at, I will for now, let it be because I want to get back to my spa story. 

  • Shockingly, I was way more comfortable being naked in front of strangers than in front of my friends. You know how they say that it is easier to open up to strangers you will never meet again than do the same with your friends. The same feeling applies here. I admit, seeing my friends undress gave me courage to do it myself but once that deed was done, all I wanted to do was hide myself from them because these are people I was going to interact with closely after we were done with the spa weekend. But obviously, hiding from them was not an option. Moving on.

  • When you are mortified and crouching in shame, an alter ego who you never knew existed, suddenly appears and takes charge. Did you know that? Well, I did not. If I did, I would have wanted her to be a confident woman who thinks she is beautiful. Strangely, the alter ego who presented herself was not that. Neither was she one who was extremely conscious of herself like I was. To her, it did not matter how she looked. She told me, “It is just a body!” “How absurd is that?” I thought. I mean you either think of yourself as beautiful or as an eye-sore. I did not know that there was an alternative way of looking at your body. So there I was, under the control of this alter-ego who obviously did not think it worthwhile to hide behind or from her friends and strutted around enjoying all the different saunas the facility had.


If you are wondering about nude spas, let me tell you a thing or two about them. Generally, nobody stares at anyone. It is rude to do so and everyone knows that. So no staring. That does not mean that people do not slyly look. I only know this because I did slyly look. Not my alter-ego, but I. But then, she was in charge, so I soon forgot about looking. This place also had all kinds of Jacuzzis and pools and perhaps more than once you found yourself sharing them with just another man who was naked as well. Now when I think of it I am shocked and amazed at how nonchalantly the alter-ego carried herself around and I am in deep admiration of her.

This alter ego taught me a few good things that weekend. I went back unable to stop thinking about what had taken place over those two days. I realised how much of my energy was spent judging my body in one way or another. It was an impediment to me being at peace with my body and consequently with the world around me because, as it later became clear, I assumed that the world looks at me with the same critical pair of eyes that I use to look at myself. I still have to remind myself that the people around me (in Europe, at least) are least bothered by how I look.

Two things happened with regard to how I see my body ever since this happened. These two sound contrary to each other. Therefore I am finding it difficult to put this across. But let me try still.

  • I felt like this body is not a part of me anymore. If now someone calls me fat I see it as a state of appearance of my body. Somehow I am much less unaffected by their remarks because I do not assume that it is a judgement passed on me but it simply seems to be a way of talking about the physical appearance of my body. I would say I am ‘less unaffected’ and not ‘completely unaffected’ because of this reason- as a woman who is almost approaching spinsterhood (as my larger family puts it), people assume that the reason why I am still unmarried is because of how I look. Probably as a direct result of this, my family feels pressured to constantly remind me that I need to lose weight. I have had concerned neighbours approach me after church services telling me how I simply needed to do it soon because I was getting old and it wouldn’t be long before no man would want me! Them saying these things still affect me in some ways. For starters, here I am convinced that “It is just a body” and I am irritated that people around me do not see it that way and ascribe physical appearance much more importance than it deserves.

  • The second thing is this. I feel a deep sense of love for my body. It does not feel like a part of me anymore yet I feel responsible for it and I feel the need to understand it and give it respect for housing me- like make it look presentable in a way that I feel my body deserves.



As it happens with most life-changing experiences, the effects of it begins to wear off with time. What one then needs to do is to keep oneself as close to that experience so that one can be reminded and be motivated to continue in the glory that the experience rewarded one with. If there is anyone like me out there who needs to be freed of this venomous way of looking at oneself, I urge you to do something similar to what I did (if you are ever presented with such an opportunity- like if traveling to Europe J). Letting go of the one thing that hides what you are ashamed of the most is the only thing that can help you. Thinking you do not look good is poisonous. Thinking you are beautiful does not help in any way. If there is anything you need to tell yourself, it is that “It is just a body!”