Think of the term bully and most of us disassociate ourselves from it. We aren’t bullies and we don’t get bullied, right? Wrong! The mindset of considering bullying as something that happens to ‘other people’ is one that makes us most vulnerable to it. Take for example Shweta-Bachchan Nanda; you’d think that the daughter of India’s biggest star couple would be free from high school bullying. However her recent column in DNA proves otherwise.
“I remember my teenage years, a growth spurt at age 12, a disastrous haircut and an overbite that could compete with Bugs Bunny, I was the human equivalent of a bottlebrush. Painfully thin, gawky, with limbs that were growing faster than I knew what to do with… and then there was acne. It’s a miracle I ever left the house.”
Since high school is definitely the year where what your peers say holds much more value that what anyone else can, Shweta’s confidence took a beating when the name Big Bird, a result of her physical appearance, stuck to her.
“It was in a particularly inauspicious chemistry class (not my forté, I am prone to the arts) when dressed in all yellow, I knocked over a test tube with something vile and frothy in it, and managed to burn a little hole in my partner’s folder. He was naturally livid and told me to “stop flapping about like Big Bird.” The name stuck! It has defined me since.”
A victim of body shaming, Shweta is faced with the insecurities all over again as she consoles her daughter, who seems to have inherited the thin frame, and the bullying.
“In a couple of days, my eldest turns 18, an adult. It’s a big deal in the UK, where she currently schools. I am in party planning mode, when one night, my phone buzzes insistently. It’s my daughter, she’s not okay; a flurry of texts and screenshots later, I am updated… along with falling victim to a lot of teenage “mean girling” she has been body-shamed.”
As a parent, Shweta was immediately outraged. “My immediate reaction was one of utter rage! You bring your kids up with such love and care, not a day goes by when you don’t tell them or remind them in different ways just how wonderful they are…. And then, someone callously brings it all crashing down and their only authority is that they are your child’s peer and their word will, for a while, mean more to them than manna from heaven. It is the worst kind of bullying, simply because it leaves the most lasting impact!!”
The takeaway for all of us, perhaps from this confession (of sorts) is that bullying and body shaming is something that happens to the best of us. And something that the best ones of us do too. I recently had a conversation with a friend who refused to accept that thin people can be body shamed. She went ahead to call another friend, ‘skinny legs’ for the rest of the evening. Her explanation was ‘I am jealous of her legs, I want them too. How is it body shaming?’ But it is. Each time you pick on any body part – it could be someone’s tall frame, someone’s fat arms, heck it could also be someone’s geeky glasses or maybe their wild hair – you ARE body shaming.
“I ring her phone, she picks up, stifling her tears, I can feel her pain and my heart breaks a little more…,” writes Swetha. “I tell her this isn’t going to be the last time someone will be hurtful to her, but she cannot let the world define who she is. She is born into a family that prides itself on defying conventions. I hang up and can’t help but say aloud to myself, “Welcome to the world baby girl, learn to roll with the punches, it is the first lesson of adulthood.”
And while her little girl grows up, next time you face body shaming, or you comment on someone’s physical appearance, take a pause, reflect and do the right thing.
