Everyone Should Read Actress Zarine Khan's Powerful Post on Bodyshaming

New Delhi: Actress Zarine Khan is winning admiration for an inspiring post on Instagram in which she reveals that she struggled with her weight and being bodyshamed. Zarine, 28, accompanied her lengthy Instagram note with two photos of her much heavier self, both taken when she was in school.

What the Housefull 2 actress says about her younger self is, or should be, a lesson in self-esteem and self-worth: "When I look at these pictures, I feel proud of myself today. Not that I felt any lesser about myself back then. Inspite of being so big I never let people's comments or ideas about me bother me. Because it's my life and my body and only I have the right to decide what I'm going to do with it."

In her note, she writes that losing weight was difficult and that she had already lost the extra kilos by the time she was cast in her first film (2010's Veer, co-starring Salman Khan). She was asked to gain weight to play the role of Princess Yashodhara in the film. And since irony often ups and dies in Bollywood, she was slammed by some for the weight gain: "Unfortunately I was criticised to no end for my weight but again I never let that get to me. How could I? Those people had not seen me like the way I am in these pictures here. And for me everything was just an achievement to reach from where I was to where I am."

Undeterred, Zarine made fitness a "way of life" and makes no attempt to hide the stretch marks that came with shedding poundage. "I believe in flaunting it," she explains, "it makes me feel like a tigress with stripes."

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Zarine, last seen 2015's Hate Story 3, concludes her post by saying that her transformation has been for herself and not because of being bodyshamed.

Read her entire post here:
 

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Like Zarine Khan, actress Parineeti Chopra has discovered the hard way that people won't be happy no matter how you look. The 27-year-old actress was trolled last November after debuting a new, toned physique that took her nine months of working out to achieve. (Also Read: Parineeti Chopra's New Look Wins Twitter. Everybody But the Trolls)

Parineeti's colleague Sonakshi Sinha, Modern Family star Ariel Winter, musician Ariana Grande and model Gigi Hadid have also spoken out about being bodyshamed.

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It's not just female celebrities, either. Actress Sridevi's teenaged daughter Khushi posted a fierce Instagram note in January, writing: "I don't care if you think my stomach pops out or if I don't fit into your idea of beautiful." She was preceded by Pooja Bedi's 18-year-old daughter Aalia who wrote a blog piece titled "I am more than my breasts" denouncing disrespectful social media comments describing her as 'porn ready.'

Read Khushi Kapoor's post here: