Explained: How Uorfi Javed is teaching us the importance of self-gaze

When Uorfi Javed is not ‘distracting the youth in their blankets’ (paraphrasing from the recent controversy), she’s doing something that warrants far more attention. She’s co-opting the power of the male gaze and turning it on its head to define her own worth and agency. As we should also be doing––recalibrating our own definition of beauty and representation, taking no gaze into consideration, save our own.

Because the male gaze, hell any external gaze, is oh-so-passe. I don’t know about you but I’m sick of Indian men blaming everything on a woman’s clothing. If she wears a short skirt, she should be raped. If she wears a hijab, she should not be allowed to study. If she wears green lingerie, she should be objectified and annihilated. The male gaze, for the uninitiated, is a prescribed way of looking at women. It empowers men, while sexualizing and diminishing women. It turns women into passive items to possess and use as props. For centuries, women’s self-perception and esteem has been unfortunately defined by this conditioning. What if we chose to disarm the external gaze and recalibrated it on our own terms: the loving self-gaze?

For everything around us is designed to make us feel smaller than we are. Social media, in particular, is like those parlour aunties who tell you your skin is sallow, your hair is limp, your nails are brittle. Therefore, the rich don’t think they’re rich enough. The thin don’t think they’re thin enough. The famous don’t think they’re famous enough. Yet, we all strive to be rich, thin, and famous. Aren’t we enough?

I am like most women, to be honest, trapped in that eternal quest to lose the last five kilos. It’s taken me much unlearning and unconditioning to stop speaking badly of my own body. I still fail, every day. And so, every day I have to remind myself that these extra five kilos I carry are the stories I have been able to write. It’s the womb that has given me two children in my late-30s. It’s the stolen moments I can snuggle with my children in the morning and read them books at nighttime. It’s that last piece of cake I share with my friends so we can laugh the loudest. It’s relishing good food with my parents to celebrate still having them in my life. It’s popping open that bottle of champagne to welcome a new decade of existence. These are not kilos. These are the life I am able to live.

When we don’t fit into a pair of shoes, we don’t curse our feet. We buy new shoes. So, when we don’t fit into a pair of jeans, instead of cursing our bodies, why don’t we buy new jeans? We are not meant to fit into clothes, clothes are meant to fit us.

Beauty is not performative. Beauty is not a standard; it is not finite. Beauty is an illusion. I have been told I am beautiful, or not, depending on the state of my body, the state of my skin, how my hair looks one day, what I’m wearing the other day. I’ve gone from being called nerdy in my pre-teens, to cute in my early teens, to hot in my teens, to blah in my teens, to beautiful in my twenties, to ugly in my twenties, to elegant in my thirties, to fat in my thirties. The same body and face you have throughout your life will be called different things by different people. The same rose that is considered beautiful one day, is tossed in the dustbin the next day. Beauty is actually in the eyes of the beholder, so don’t hold yourself to conventional standards of beauty.

What if we spoke to ourselves the way we speak to our best friend? What if we looked in the mirror each morning and instead of allowing our inner monologue to be our body’s worst critic, an echo chamber of social conditioning, we unchained it to be our body’s best ally, an echo chamber of our own mind’s conditioning to do what’s best for our body––being our own cheerleader? Can you imagine how many industries that thrive on female insecurity will fall? Do you know how many centuries of conditioning will unravel? Do you recognize the power of your own thoughts, the ability to spin that critic to a cheerleader, and change the world? Existing as you are, without apology, without external validation, is the best form of feminism there is.

A passion whose flame fails to be fanned eventually burns out. Don’t be afraid to be you, to fan your own flame. The only person allowed to define your beauty is you. Don’t waste that power on anyone else. You have a choice in defining your own beauty. Make it a practice to treat yourself with more acceptance and compassion. For everyone deserves to be loved for who they truly are. Especially women. Let Uorfi teach you that.

In an era where we fetishize opinions we don’t own, the weekly ‘Moderate Mahila Mandate’ presents unadulterated and non-partisan views on what’s happening to women in India today.

Meghna Pant is a multiple award-winning and bestselling author, screenwriter and columnist, whose latest novel BOYS DON’T CRY (Penguin Random House) will soon be seen on screen. You can Insta her @Meghna.Pant.