“Ever since I was a little girl, I loved the idea of having breasts. Once my dad caught me reading one of his anatomy books, while I was very sincerely glued to the chapter on breasts. From a very young age my obsession with maintaining them and waiting for them to grow began.
I was a lean, dark toned girl at least till the time puberty was running the magic wand on me. I was conscious of my looks and to add to that misery I discovered that I needed spectacles as well.

Throughout school I survived on padded bras with an extra layer of cotton just so that nobody would ever call me “flat” or “boobless”. As if these words would decide my life, because in the mind of that ninth grade girl boobs were the ultimate definition of feminity and not having the perfect bosom, the ones they show on television and in music videos would make me less of a woman.

My whole college life was all about fancy lingerie, oil massages and even home remedies to gain some fat there.

Nothing really worked. As women we are always told to please the man at all cost. I still remember being hurt by my boyfriend who was into huge boobs. I felt inadequate because of his fantasy and made my ass the sole point of attention. That was the beginning of my very toxic relationship with my body in my early 20s.

I have been studying psychology for almost eight years now and very recently I fell in love with my body. I remember that day when I decided that I would wear cotton bras because some days a girl just wants to breathe and I wouldn’t oil my boobs for a man.

I learned through other women’s struggles that being a woman comes from different facets that are beyond one’s body. I realized that the every body is unique and that the most difficult person to please is yourself. You create those unrealistic and unreasonable expectations for yourself and feel bad when you don’t meet them. Bodies have limitations, however much I try I will never be like the airbrushed models of Victoria’s Secret and if the society tells me to aim for that then I would raise my middle finger up to this cruel world.

I realized that I will have to stand for myself, for my body and love and heal by eating healthy and taking care of my needs. My boyfriend might like a hundred things in me and might hate a hundred other things and similarly I would in him.

As women we need to love, embrace and accept our unique curves, those folds of skin, that  mole you just can’t remove and all those billion scars and flaws that the world tells us to keep at home.

Dance, especially belly dancing was my point of true healing and acceptance of my body, sexuality and my inner goddess. That dance form made me comfortable with my vulnerable edges, my confident curves and my sensous soul. I realized I was a force of nature, so wild and so strong, that not everyone could run along with me. I appreciated each and every part of my body and expressed myself more freely, wearing whatever makes me conformable, and caring lesser and lesser about how would people react to my body being exposed like that. Today I am confident enough to talk and share my story, that young girl wasn’t.”

They wanted to be drawn like they were emerging from the ocean. Background inspiration Kerala mural art

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