“What if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.”
– Anne Lamott
A few months ago, I came across an article by Anne Lamott on how our perfectionism kills the creative spirit. Though the article was written from the perspective of a professional writer, it holds true for each one of us, because everyone is an artist. That does not mean an “artist” in just the usual and narrow sense of the word like an actor or a painter, but it is a word that describes the essence of what it means to be a human being. It doesn’t matter what your means of expression are, you could be and should be creative in any and every field that you choose to be a part of, without worrying about the imperfections. This need for creativity also extends to one’s own body, and it would only be satisfied when we find freedom from our inner insecurities.
The road to body positivity had been particularly hard for me, and that is the reason why Anne Lamott’s words resonate so powerfully with me. The narratives about body positivity are almost always centered around two ends of the spectrum, either the plus-size or the zero-size. My body does not lie on either of these ends, but my “mid-size” body image issues were just as real as they are for any other body shape and size. I would always wear a jeans and a kurti to hide the cellulite on my thighs, or try to stick to poses that would make it seem less evident. Consequently, my fashion choices got limited to boxy and loose-fitting clothes that could hide my body fat.
My first step towards body positivity was widening my range in terms of the outfits that I wore, and getting rid of the false notion that there is something wrong with my body. I began questioning myself, whether I could actually wear something that celebrates every curve on my body, without making me feel embarrassed about it? I started experimenting with my choice of clothing, and thereupon discovered fluid fashion. That is how I came across LIVA, a high quality fabric made using natural cellulosic fibres exclusively from Aditya Birla Group. Liva is the one brand that has stuck with me throughout my body positivity journey, and will continue to stay with me even in the future. The Liva fabric gave me and plenty other women the freedom that we were seeking from boxy, restrictive, stifling, and sometimes rather uncomfortable garments. Changing the way one dresses automatically changes the way one feels. So, as my fashion preferences changed, even I transformed as a person. I grew confident in what I was capable of and what my body was capable of. The speed at which Liva made products are moving from the shelves is a testimony of how many lives they have touched and changed for the better.
