Hey Auntie Agni,
I am a 14-year-old girl from Karachi. I am a frank and open-minded person but I get criticised daily on my appearance. People have called me ‘moti.’ Even my friends in school call me ‘bhains’, ‘cow’ and ‘bulldozer’. Some of my family members indirectly give advice and remedies to overcome my weight problem. I consider this name-calling an insult to me. It’s worse than torture for me. I am depressed.
Overweight

Dear Value-Yourself,
You are letting people’s opinions of you colour your opinion of yourself. Everyone has a part or parts of their body that they feel can be improved (yes, even supermodels do!). However, I would urge you to change your perspective and focus on what is right with your body. Does your body function properly? Do you have a lot of energy? Do you have a strong immune system? Whatever it is that is right about your body, be thankful for it.

More importantly, no one’s opinion about you or your body matters. What your school mates (I would not call them friends) or family members are saying to you is just their opinion. At the same time I would urge you to get a doctor’s opinion on your weight, just to rule out any underlying health problems that you might have, or to see if the doctor suggests that you need to lose weight to prevent any future health problems from occurring.

‘I am constantly fat-shamed’

Regardless of whether you have a health issue or not, no one has the right to insult you or call you names. Please understand that we have been fed a lot of narrow and unrealistic ideas about beauty by society and the media. But these are actually someone else’s ideas about what counts as beauty. Just other people’s opinions. Period.

Please also understand that you have a choice. You can take those opinions as fact and beat yourself up over not measuring up to them, or you can understand that these people are essentially brainwashed and that they have bought into what the media or society tells them is beauty. These ‘beauty’ standards have been put in place to constantly tell people that they are not good enough unless they are as stick-thin as the model they are watching on their screens. And usually the audience’s feeling of inadequacy is used to sell them something. For instance, if you look at a lot of advertising for cosmetics, they perpetuate the myth that unless you use their latest range of lip colour, you will not be beautiful/famous, able to get to Paris, able to get a rishta or a man. See how crazy it sounds? Unfortunately, too many people have risked their health and mental health trying to live up to the unrealistic images they hear about from society and the media.

Please understand that we have been fed a lot of narrow and unrealistic ideas about beauty by society and the media. But these are actually someone else’s ideas about what counts as beauty.

Auntie would strongly suggest that you see these opinions for exactly what they are … opinions! Once you do that, get a medical opinion about your weight and work with your doctor on a plan to lose weight, if he or she advises you to do so.

At the same time, remind yourself that there is no perfect body. What you see in an image has been worked on, filtered, cropped, enhanced, etc. Not even the model looks like her Instagram image in real life. But you knew that already! At the end of the day, all of us are unique beings and that is what makes the world an interesting place. I hope more and more of us understand that.

Auntie will not reply privately to any query. Please send concise queries to: auntieagni@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 13th, 2019