Movies are still largely peopled with good looking people with perfect hair and chiselled bodies. However, we do get the odd film that seems to have ‘normal’ people; people that look like the rest of us: fat, thin, thick, scrawny, with bad skin, thinning hair, short, tall etc. These movies are more inclusive and we tend to feel less pressure to look and be a certain way at the end of it. Here are some movies with a body positivity message:
Ayushmann Khurrana as Bala is confused, shy, and diffident about his hair loss. The movie takes a look at personal insecurities, the snake oil sellers that con people into trying all sorts of ‘home remedies’ and superstitions. The movie would have been a lot more effective if the fair skilled Bhumi Pednekar had not been presented to us with incongruous brown-face.
Some people think they would be happy – if only they were a few inches taller. Obviously, happiness doesn’t lie in inches – or lack thereof. This is a cute teen rom-com, mostly predictable but watchable nonetheless. It tackles the issue of being too tall and the jeering this attracts from the more ‘normal’ peers as well as the protagonist coming to terms with her height and what really matters in life.
The overweight, underconfident young woman who thinks of herself as unattractive has a head injury and suddenly sees herself very differently. The movie is all about deriving one’s self-worth not from other people’s perceptions but from one's own self-belief.
This 2002 movie is significant for having an impact culturally, aesthetically and historically. It called out the expectations that society, as well as families, have of women – to look a certain way, make certain life choices and sacrifices and tolerate a certain type of emotional abuse. This movie was something of a path breaker that invited women to acknowledge their shape, cellulite, supposed imperfections and to thumb their noses at the unreasonable expectations of others.
This is a movie about how we all come in different shapes, sizes and colours but can have strong bonds that bind us together regardless. Lena, Tibby, Bee and Carmen are very different sizes and shapes, but strangely there is this one pair of jeans that fits them all perfectly. There are different journeys each of the girls takes in this film based on a series of young adult fiction books.
In this movie, a young girl is coming to terms with her burgeoning young body and the problems kids her age face. The struggles with a growing bosom, body hair, clothes that no longer fit, peer pressure and jeers from the ‘cool kids’ --- it’s all part of this rather unusual Karan Johar film. For once, the school kids don’t have perfect hair and bodies but the opposite, sending out the body positivity message.
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