Notes
This book is indebted to many people, experiences, and conditions. Even as it primarily originated in the personal experiences of the editors as well their overall understanding of Indian womanhood, it took its current shape from debates and discussions with many an Indian everywoman, activist, and scholar, some of whom have contributed chapters to this book. This project, then, is an outcome of years of engagement with and experiences of body image discourses, which the editors have encountered both as women and as academics.
Some of the earliest books that the editors read while studying feminist theory as undergraduate students, including Susie Orbach’s Fat Is a Feminist Issue, Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth, and Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, have been powerful tools for articulating body anxieties and formed the foundational ideas on which this project was built. While engaging with such works early in life, the editors realized that what the Western feminists were addressing had deep reverberations within Indian contexts as well where an ideal body image emerges from numerous intersectional forces to oppress and delimit women, just as it does in many other parts of the world. Subsequently, the editors found both familiarity and solace in the voices of Radhika E. Parameswaran, Jyotsna Vaid, Amali Phillip, and Vanita Reddy, among others, for variously challenging the hegemony of an ideal body image, specifically for Indian women. To these voices of resistance, the editors remain ever grateful.
In addition, the editors are grateful to Gurumurthy Neelakantan of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, who was the thesis adviser of the lead editor, Srirupa Chatterjee, and provided many valuable insights on the problem of women’s embodiment that this book builds on. Chatterjee is also grateful to Esther Rothblum of San Diego State University, who, while not being directly associated with this project, has been a huge source of inspiration for her enormous contribution to the field of fat studies and her scholarly resistance to body shaming. If this book has gained enormously from Chatterjee’s brief academic interactions with her, Rothblum’s nuanced articulations on issues of fat stigma and fat feminism deeply inform the spirit of this book.
This project was conceptualized during the COVID-19 pandemic when our worlds became unrecognizable in many ways. This book would not have seen the light of day—especially for being crafted through lockdowns, disease, and death—had it not been for the constant support from the editor of Temple University Press, Shaun Vigil. Shaun, your earnest and prompt help in all matters, academic and personal, is deeply appreciated. Likewise, the passionate engagement with which the various contributors not only designed their essays but also worked with the editors to revise and rework their material is commendable. We are grateful to these scholars and academics who, despite facing inconveniences, challenges, and even tragedies, persisted and provided their valuable interventions. The project is also indebted to graduate students working under Chatterjee’s mentorship, Aswathi Velayathikode Anand and Shreya Rastogi, at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, for their help in compiling the various manuscript drafts of this volume.
This project could not have been successful without the tremendous encouragement and support of Sampa and Bhaskar Chatterjee, who are Srirupa Chatterjee’s parents. Chatterjee would also like to say a heartfelt thanks her sister, Moumita Chatterjee, and her husband, Sayantan Chatterjee, for their unwavering faith in her efforts; especially Sayantan, for your support has been a blessing.
The coeditor of this volume, Shweta Rao Garg, would likewise wish to thank all those who saw beauty in her when she could not see it herself: her parents, Namdev and Veena Rao; her sisters, Swati and Trupti Rao; her aunts, Mala Rao and Anita Kudva; and many others. Garg also thanks her friend, Esha Mahajan, who introduced her to body positivity and self-love in praxis. She thanks all her students, especially Sayan Mukherjee for his inputs and Revathi P. M. for her insights on body image. Garg also thanks Swapnil Rai and Namrata Chaturvedi for their support. More important, she thanks her husband, Gagan Garg, who, regardless of the projects she undertakes, is always her sounding board. Garg also acknowledges Yash, Sharanya, and Yukta, who taught her to wonder at the world around her. Finally, Garg thanks all the feminist scholars, writers, and artists who helped her unravel her complex feelings about bodies in general and her own body in particular.
The editors are ever grateful to all the names mentioned here; you have together reaffirmed our faith in appreciating human bodies in all their naturalness.