Call it my age, tinged with a sense of cynicism; grey hairs dyed with a sprinkle of melancholy, eyes spectacled with a fair share of salty tears and of course a heart lathered with dollops of heartaches. With these weapons, I look back. To my teenage years, my young adulthood and the years that I stopped keeping track of, thereafter.
And wonder what this Valentine’s Day fuss is all about!
Love and its meanings have mutated over time. From a sixteen year old having butterflies in her stomach, every time she saw her crush from the neighbouring school, to a young adult who got completely floored (read lustfully) at the first sight of her friend’s colleague at a disco in Mumbai leading to a torrid affair, culminating in marriage, the contours of love are visible, palpable in a continuum of change.
So I come straight to the point now, enough of beating around the bush. At a time when love tends to get located within a heteronormative framework or, at best, between differing sexualities, I step away and look at love as a lustful affair with the self. We hear of self-love, “love thyself” with all its imperfections and all that jazz. I take it a little further; what if that self is more temporal, more corporeal? Your own body, in other words? How about loving your body as if it were your lover?
Picture this. Women go through a barrage of physical onslaught. From puberty to pregnancy to menopause, it causes cataclysmic turmoil in the body. Our breasts droop, that stubborn little pregnancy pouch refuses to budge, the cellulite in the thigh gets more determined than ever, while the bones get weaker; and I am not even going into the hot flashes, the mood swings and all the paraphernalia that comes with it like “buy one get one free”! And you stand in front of the mirror, in all your nakedness, wondering, “What just happened?”
In an age where social media content work in tandem with the cosmetic and fitness industry to set fictitious beauty narratives, it is nothing short of an act of rebellion to defy all and love your body, irrespective of all the bombardment of messages. And I speak from personal experience. As someone who has battled weight loss troubles due to two short spaced pregnancies; had a turbulent relationship with fad diets yoyoing between extremes, and now in my forties got hit by the early symptoms of peri-menopause, I know the drill that we women face. And that brings me to where I started.
Love to me is an affair with the self, particularly with my body. In fact, my love for my body has taken precedence over everything else. I look after my body, nurture it by eating right, working out and draw my boundaries so no one dares to pull me down. For far too long, we have been projected and depicted through the male gaze, the phallocentric vision of desire and beauty. It’s time we reclaimed our rightful space by picturing ourselves through our own imagination of desire.
To elucidate, here goes a small note. For years, women have been made to believe that men gifting sexy innerwear to their partners is the epitome of desirability, at times bordering on sexual fantasy. I do not discredit that completely. But I’d like to ask, have you ever tried buying one yourself, stand in front of the mirror and look at yourself, through your own eyes, and exclaim, “whoa, look at that hotness staring back at me!” That’s the love I am trying to bring to the table.
So get that sexy lingerie, a pair of stilettos perhaps, strike a pose, for your eyes only and look at yourself in admiration. Tell that annoying cellulite to take a walk. Its presence does not matter. It does not matter because you are beautiful. No, it’s not narcissism but the most unadulterated form of self-love. Your body is your Valentine. Love it the way you would love your partner. Full of lust and desire. Carnal and primeval. And watch how you evolve into that irresistible phenomenon as your body reciprocates those feelings you fed into it. And that’s a rebellion that even St. Valentine would bow down to.
On that note, Happy Valentine’s Day!
