The Beauty Myth

Four writers reveal how they learned to love themselves.

DEEP WATERS

MANJU KAPUR ON TAKING BACK CONTROL OF HER BODY

The only sport I took to in all my bookish youth was swimming. Unfortunately swimming involved swimsuits, and swimsuits involved my mother.

My first experience with a swimsuit marked the uneasy relationship I would have with them for the rest of my life. It was got on one of my father’s trips abroad, a white one-piece with small aquamarine flowers and thin straps that tied at the neck. I ran into the bathroom to try it on: It fitted perfectly. It was a little low in front, but hey, it was a swimsuit wasn’t it?

My mother looked at it and said nothing. The next day I found the slight dip in the swimsuit covered with a thick piece of white cloth that arched coyly towards the neck. I was outraged. How dare she stitch pieces of cloth onto my swimsuit, and that too without asking? It was my swimsuit, and though the thought was too daring for me to articulate, it was my body.

Impasse. She would not let me go swimming in something she thought revealing, and I would not wear anything that drew such embarrassing attention to my pubescent chest. Instead, I would sit in the house, in the heat, and suffer, right in front of her eyes.

Eventually, she trimmed the white lace to more discrete proportions. But every time I wore it, I felt unhappy. I was a walking, swimming advertisement of both modesty and my mother. It was not that I wanted to be an exhibitionist, I didn’t, but I wanted to feel free to make my own choices, and that freedom, my mother was telling me, I did not have.

Owning the body of a girl starts so early in her life. This demand that I cover myself lasted until I left my parents’ home. “You can do what you like after you marry,” said my mother at the end of every argument. I even believed her.