On back fat and big bundis

Remember that incident where Bhoomi Harendran wasn’t allowed into The Love Bar? Well, in the video, the bouncer mentions the word ‘rupaya’ and the word stayed in my mind. Of course, I understand that the incident was more about transphobia and less about what this post is about. I’m not taking away from the fact that the LGBT+ community continues to face a crap tonne of discrimination and hate in this country and the world.

But that word rupaya and the bouncer’s use of the word made me think of how we tend to judge people and make assumptions about them based on their appearance, mostly because, a few weeks ago, I felt my rupaya or appearance being judged when the bouncers were considering if I should be let into a similar establishment.

I think about a woman in a short tight dress at a high-end club being judged by one standard and a woman in similar attire standing on the pavement in the night by another.

We look at people and stick so many labels on them based on how they look. These labels range from sexuality to career to social class to background. We judge so much about a person based on how they look.

I’ve been coming back to this again and again over the past few weeks. What is it about someone’s appearance that reveals so much to us?

This incident that took place months/years ago comes to mind. I, unfortunately, can’t name names because I still work in the same industry and there are certain things I don’t want to deal with. But I handled three youth tabloids from 2014 to 2019. The work is different to the reporting I currently do, with stricter deadlines and more responsibilities.

Whether they were 16 or 20 pages, I had to find content to fill all pages week after week. It was fun, challenging, and interesting.

One of these pages was the cover page. The cover is a big deal because people may not judge a book by its cover but they sure do judge a tabloid by its cover. There have been times when I haven’t had a cover a few hours before the deadline. There have been times when I have paid a photographer with my own money to have a cover picture taken. There have been times when I’ve had to use cover pictures I hate just because someone wanted that particular person on the cover.

But an incident that I wish I didn’t have to deal with stands out. I featured an extremely talented person on the cover of one the issues and didn’t see anything wrong with it. The individual in question was female, dressed well (mentioning this because a sneaky bra strap appearance was once made a big deal of), and had quite a following. The picture was taken well too. I thought everything was okay but the day after the issue was in print, it became the topic of discussion at an editorial meeting.

I was told an inside story would have been fine but that she wasn’t suitable for the cover. Why? Well…

It took them a few minutes to get there, but the problem was plain and simple. Said individual wasn’t thin. She wasn’t even a size 14. So there I was, someone who kept gaining weight by the day, listening to quite a few people dealing with various weight issues tell me that this incredibly talented kid shouldn’t have been on the cover because she was “well… umm… you know… not to be rude but… fat.”

And I’ve never felt so disgusted and defeated at work ever before or ever since. I was told to select pictures of women who look a certain way, even if all they did was upload a few extremely filtered pictures on Instagram. This takes some skill and talent, sure, but not all of them were cover material.

I no longer handle tabloids. I don’t want to. And one of the reasons is this. We talk about fat shaming and body positivity on our personal platforms but we promote this image of the perfect woman who is slim and fair and feminine.

We look at someone and if they don’t tick these boxes, we hide them in the inside pages of a tabloid. We tell them the club is at its maximum capacity. We whisper about them behind their back. We laugh at the way they wear clothes that are not suited for someone their size. We laugh at their confidence which may very well be a defence mechanism against how awful we are about appearance and size and shape and complexion.

Looking around me, looking at people struggling to fit into the world’s unrealistic beauty standards, I wish we see more tummies and fat thighs and back fat. I wish we can see these things without being told they are flaws or problems or things to be embarrassed about. I wish we can look beyond a person’s appearance.

And I wish, more than anything, that I had taken a firmer stand back when I was pulled up for featuring someone who is doing amazing things with their life. I wish I had the guts to do that.