"...look at that fat trainer!"

"...look at that fat trainer!"

... I heard one of the guys walking past me say on the beach this morning.

So if you read my post from a couple of days back, I did a beach training session with my school mate today. The morning beach buzzes with joggers/runners and folks getting trained. A few feet away from where we were training there was this batch of a couple of people being trained by an overweight trainer. A few mins into the drill I overheard this guy who was walking by with his friend comment on this trainer's appearance with a wide grin.

Body-shaming is so ingrained into our system right from childhood that it is indeed difficult to realize when you make a comment on someone being fat/anorexic. However, while everyone aspires to maintain the right amount of body mass, it certainly doesn't stop one from pursuing what they are passionate about. For eg, the best of bollywood choreographers have been overweight yet they belted out innumerable hits where people loved their choreography. I've known a lady with a visual impairment (will talk about her some day) from my college days deliver kick-ass powerpoint presentations month after month.

But I guess it is a slow process of bringing awareness about the need to avoid body-shaming and am sure kids of today are more aware than what we were when we were kids.

Fun-fact - my nick name that some of my cousins still call me with is jaadu (fatso) coz I was apparently chubby and cute when I was a kid. Now there is absolutely no way I ever got offended by it - I rather love it when they call me that even now, but that just shows how in the 80s we normalized such terms and everyone around loved it too !

PS: The message on the image is in Hindi and it translates to "He used to make my erasers disappear during school days and now he is making my calories dissappear"

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