The Weighty Whoopla!

Ask any man about this and then a woman and you would get a different reaction or response. So what’s new, you may wonder...ask men and women anything under the sun and expect different retorts.
Hmm...Quite true actually...except that when we talk of weight obsession...there is the interplay of a whole gamut of issues...
We, the modern women, diet, we work out, we starve...the scales are our best friends and worst enemies...to stay in proportions our attitudes often go all out of proportions. We are busy women...for we are round the clock preoccupied with our weight woes.

Why is the new age woman so fixated with losing weight?
This is a universal cry my friend...asked by curious men who would slyly accept that they love to see their woman be a slim stunner as well as by jealous women who wish the others in their species to rest, so that they themselves would not have to go through similar gruelling sessions of body shaping. I read a quote by someone somewhere... ‘You can never be too rich or too thin’...so true...Tell a woman that she should stop her weight loss drills because she is already looking undernourished and she would coyly bat her eyelids and coo... “Arrey nahi yaar...still need to lose these tyres” and she would try hard to pull the skin...actually stretch it beyond any possibility of elasticity to prove it to herself and the others that they exist and you are left with no other option but to conspicuously nod.

‘The new age woman should eye her market value in terms of the appreciation she evokes by her appearance’, was commented upon by a dear friend of mine. For him and many other of his masculine counterparts, any woman who manages to get heads turned, is a woman they would like to see by their side.
I, of course mouthed some @#$%^&^%$# to him. What about heads turning in the other direction when the bimbette begins to talk, I asked? But I couldn’t help agree with the mentality there. Most single men think on those lines. And hence it becomes a natural follow up for single girls and even married women to take up the herculean task of being and looking like a diva, no matter whether they have just woken up a few seconds before or even after partying to madness for many hours...They must look ethereal.

Women strive at cumbersome sessions at the gym, couple it with walks or power yoga or kick boxing, etc. They manage to sniff through the food and sometimes even take an obligatory bite...just so that those contours remain in perfect alignment...They rush like a zombie to meet weekly rituals at the parlours where face packs and tucks and lifts galore...Living on soups and salads, green tea and oats, slimming shakes and porridge, they pass on the best years of their lives in an insane abstinence. Well, one ogling look from a hotties at the bar and there they feel it was worth it! Wow, what a neurotically fulfilling life!

However, the cycle quite switches into reverse gears for men once they are hooked and booked and the beauty they fantasized about transforms into the in house super woman. Another dear friend of mine has remarked... ‘God in all his generosity makes such beautiful creatures called women and then in all his wrath transforms them into wives’ ...hehe...I think he must have copied and pasted it from somewhere...But then for guys the truth really and slowly starts to unfold when they get included in the circus and the rationale of their better halves...

Don’t get me wrong here...they still want the stunner by their side, but to see their madams struggling with it inch by inch and being an actual witness and partners-in-arm in it is a revelation in itself. While most men would in all truth drub the size zero mania, they are equally annoyed when they take their women out to dine at the snazzy new restaurant...the lady orders sumptuous treats on the grotesquely priced menu...savours a bite and then puts up white flags...bas, that’s all my dietician has allowed me to have...

And if that’s not all, in that supposedly romantic night out, while the poor guy strives hard to catch your attention dear lady, you are too busy checking out your rivals and their sizes... “Hmm... look at Xyz there, she seems to have lost pounds within this week. Do u think she has got liposuction done...must have...otherwise it is just not possible and I also think there is a boob job done there...just look at those!” And before the hapless husband can mouth out whether Ms. Xyz has or has not...another hot new chick passes by, consuming his beloved’s attention instead of his, as god meant things to be in their natural course...Not to mention the next day, holding his beloved’s arm while she struggles with pukes and loose motions because she ACTUALLY ate the previous night....!

So there it just not remains an obsession with OUR weight...but we take it upon our fragile shoulders to post-mortem every dame’s sizes ranging from Kareena Kapoor to Sania Mirza....from Kangana Renaut’s waif like figure to the sensual curves of Malliaka Sharawat...Oooooh what a tough world it is for us! So many goals to reach, standards to meet, aspirations to achieve! The biggest of clandestine missions baffling our world is not the rocket science of finding a cure to AIDS...it is...Do men want flesh or bones? Or do I look too fat in this dress? Or when will I be able to weigh 50 kgs on the scales?

Hmmm...I guess women want to be thin so that they get an edge over other “fatter” women...which are really women who are thin as beanpoles!
Men don’t want us fat, but then they don’t want to be moving around with reeds either!
If our obsession was just till us, probably the world would have survived this catastrophe...but naah...we pull in every woman worth her mettle in this sprint to make the pursuit truly meaningful!
Wow...when some wise guy said that ‘women are the greatest of mysteries’ probably he had a weight obsessed beloved hovering about his head at that moment. Can we please allow our bodies and souls to rest in peace for a while?