"You are so much more than a number on a weighing scale or the size of your outfit" — Sonakshi Sinha

Self-love can resolve everything and if you have an abundance of it, you will fight the urge to gaslight yourself into believing you’re not good enough. You will pay no heed to what seems like society’s pressing need to put you in a box, brimming with redundant stereotypes. With enough self-love, you will know what you bring to the table when to walk away and why you must never settle for less. However, body image issues have been passed down through generations but we’ve been taking steps towards healing that side of our existence. We need more conversations around this subject and many celebrities have been positively using their tremendous reach to catalyse this. 

Actress Sonakshi Sinha has been advocating self-love and body-positivity through her interviews and even her 2022 film Double XL exhibits her drive to help people love themselves a little more. Sinha was featured as the cover star in Cosmopolitan India’s June 2020 issue and offered great insights into her journey to self-love.

Here's diving into the interview from Cosmopolitan India's archives. 

“I want to tell them to stop putting so much pressure on themselves, to look a certain way,” she said. “I mean, if you want to look a particular way, go for it. But don’t obsess or beat yourself up over it... You are so much more than a number on a weighing scale or the size of your outfit. And in the larger scheme of things, these things—your weight, your looks—are trivial.”

Coming from Sonakshi, this advice gives a glimpse into her experience of battling her own weight wars for years, standing up against a default view of how women’s bodies are *supposed* to look in cinema, and finally taking ownership of her body and her being. 

“You know, I was always an overweight child. I used to be 95 kilos in school,” Sonakshi told Cosmopolitan India. “People bullied me, and the boys called me names... When you’re that young, you don’t understand why you are not being able to lose weight. You don’t know why you are made this way. And then you start blaming yourself for a lot of things. And that can really affect you... What matters is how quickly you can ignore it and bounce back.” 

“Even as a young girl, I remember being very confident,” Sonakshi explained. “And if something bothered me or made me feel sad, I’d just go and play, and I would feel confident again. I never took the bullying to heart. And I didn’t let it bring me down because I’ve always known there’s much more to me than my weight or my size.”

Sinha was “amazing at sports” and would participate in debates and theatre productions, all through school and college. “I could hold a conversation. I am well-spoken and well-educated...these are the things that really built me up, not how much I weighed.” 

She was quick to admit that she might have been luckier than many other girls who have spent their lives tending to the pockmarks left behind from years of fat-shaming and bullying. “I’m probably in the minority here... Because I have interacted with girls who have been through the same issues growing up, and their confidence was shattered.”

A solid support system, Sinha will tell you, can make all the difference in the life of a young woman struggling with fluctuating self-esteem. For Sinha, her cheerleading squad was led by her father, Shatrughan Sinha. “My mom always kind of nagged me to lose weight, but I think she finally realised that the nagging wasn’t going anywhere,” Sinha said, laughing. “In fact, it was when she stopped nagging me that I decided to get fitter. My dad was always incredibly supportive, and he made it clear that it did not matter what I decide to do...he would always be there for me.”  

“He said I didn’t have to be an actress if I didn’t want to,” she continued in the 2020 interview, “And I never wanted to. He was just happy to see me happy. Like, I enjoyed playing sports in school. I was the captain of most teams, and he was very proud of my achievements... My friends saw me as a team leader, so they were not judging me for my size or my weight. You know, when you excel at something or have someone to turn to, it’s easier to feel good about yourself. And that makes you realise that confidence doesn’t just come from the way you look.”

Sinha decided to lose weight at 20...on the brink of her first film. “I remember being 18 and taking up a gym membership...it was considered kinda cool to work out at a gym. But when I got on the treadmill, I couldn’t run for more than 30 seconds! I was huffing and puffing!” she said, shaking her head. “That’s when I decided to lose weight. Not because I wanted to be an actor, but because I knew it was needed.”

Two years later, before her big Bollywood debut in Dabangg, Sinha had dropped a whopping 30 kilos. “It was a huge achievement for me,” she said. “And I was so proud of myself. But people were still talking about how much I weighed and how I looked! Eventually, I told myself that I wouldn’t let them bring me down because they had no idea what I had been through, how hard I had worked to get here. And, in the end, it really didn’t matter what they thought. They were not the ones in a big-ticket Bollywood film, I was!”