Strength TogetHER 8 - Session 3

August 15, 2021

Strength TogetHER is a virtual program facilitated by 'LOKOPAKAR', a youth organization that has achieved to provide a space and platform for individuals (especially girls and young women) to share their stories, experiences and their issues and find solutions within themselves.

On August 15th,2021, the 3rd session of Cohort 8 was conducted on the topic "Physical Insecurities” with the active participation of 21 girls which took place via zoom at 5:30 pm. Our moderator was Brigid Baba Shrestha. She is working as Speech-To-Text-Interpreter/Captioner for Hard of Hearing group of persons with disabilities. She is also a freelance content writer.

Our session started with a short introduction about  Strength TogetHER by Aahana Dhakal. As our topic was “Physical Insecurities” we discussed the things that make us feel insecure about our body, about the smallest of the smallest things that make us hate our body sometimes.

1.Our first speaker told us about her insecurity of her body hair & breast size and how being pointed out by her senior led her to be insecure.

 

2.Our second speaker shared with us how insecure she was about her belly fat and her thin eyebrows .She even got a nickname as ”Mona Lisa” because of her thin eyebrows. She paved her way to start doing something productive such as working out. 

3.Our third speaker shared her story with us of transitioning from a highly insecure person about her body weight, small height to a bit more accepting because of the environment she was in. 

4.Our fourth speaker shared her insecurity with us about the shape of her nose & also her realization that her nose shape was the thing which was making her closer to her roots.

 5.Our fifth speaker told us stories regarding her many underlying insecurities. We also got to know how she was introduced to this whole idea of beauty standards. She also shared with us the consequences of her hair insecurities which stopped her from taking many swimming lessons & compelled her to schedule her day around her hair situation. 

6.Our sixth speaker shared with us a story from her school days which enlightened us with the fact that when we are being judged about our physical features it's not us but other people's insecurities are being projected on us. 

7.Our seventh speaker told us about her insecurity regarding her teeth and the problem she faces in her daily conversation due to the positioning of her teeth. She also told us how she was always self conscious about her words whenever she spoke because of this. She also shared with us her insecurity about her skin tone.

8.Our last speaker told us about her insecurity regarding her thin hair, nose and her body. She told us stories about the things she did for her nose insecurity such as clipping her nose with binder clips. She also shared with us how now she bravely pulled off the dress she once was too scared to wear.

We also got many wise & insightful words from our moderator, which are as follows: 

1.She told us that beauty standards are subjective & how beauty standards are mostly Eurocentric thus, one needs to feel pretty for themselves.

2. She also shared with us her own stories of insecurities. She told us about her insecurity of her hair & nose and how she slowly learned to tackle it by taking her own selfies and accepting it.

3.She made us aware that women owning their body isn't something that all will accept but that shouldn't matter to us & also expressed how internal validation was more crucial than the external ones.

4.She also pointed out that nicknames based on people's nickname is very prevalent but shouldn't be used and be acceptable

In this process of knowing each other, sharing each other’s insecurities, the session provided a kind of homely warmth and didn't leave a minute where we couldn't relate to the talks. By the time we came to the end of the session we decided to take a group screenshot and ended our session at 6:52.