Do you hate being clicked from a particular angle? Do you think your double chin looks more prominent from the right or have you been told that your smile looks better from the left? It’s not uncommon to prefer one side over the other, but have you ever thought about why you made this choice? What made you think that one side of your face is prettier than the other?

Recently, actor Vidya Balan shared a post on Instagram about her experience with a young girl who wanted to get a second picture clicked with her because the first one captured the fan’s “bad side”.

 

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A post shared by Vidya Balan (@balanvidya)

In her post, Balan wrote, “A few days ago, at an event this pretty girl comes upto me for a pic …There was a crowd and i was trying to do as many pics as possible. People were jostling and in the middle of this chaos, the girl was back for another pic. My manager (who is very sharp) promptly told her,’aapne toh le liya…plz aur nahi’.

To which she said, ‘galat side se liya, main achchi nahi lag rahi, yeh post nahi kar paungi’. She was miserable & followed me to the car, relentless in her pursuit to get the perfect picture…almost making it sound like her life depended on it. I obliged …

I then got into the car bemused

…and it made me think.

You know ive always preferred my left profile over my right…but overtime as i started on this journey of trying to love & accept myself a little more each day, i realised that liking one profile meant liking one part of me to the exclusion of the other…because the truth is that i not only liked my left but also disliked my right profile. I would tell photographers & cinematographers to avoid shooting me from the right…I would be scared if someone shot me from the right cuz i thought it was my ugly side. It was almost like the fear of being found out.

Today with the growing acceptance and love for every part of me and all of me, i don’t care where i’m being shot from…I’m no longer scared of anyone seeing that side of me. Truth be told, today not only do i like my right profile, i actually love it… and not because my right profile changed but because i realized its never going to. What changed is the way i looked at myself and that changed how i see myself.

Hence i returned to the room and took this selfie at the end of a long day sans make up …because i LIKE me just the way i am.

Do you like one profile less than the other? If you do and even if you don’t, post that selfie with both your sides in full glory.”

Accepting your ‘bad side’

There is so much more to this story than just angles. It’s a part of body positivity that tends to get ignored in popular discourse. In fact, it’s not surprising that a number of influencers who speak of body positivity tend to use their ‘good angles’ while doing so. And that helps no one.

I’m 37 years old, and it took me a long, long time to make my peace with my angles. Because of social conditioning, I still cringe sometimes when I see a picture of me taken from a ‘bad angle’. My double chin from a low angle bothers me, and the slight droop in my smile on my right profile feels weird. But one of the things that helps in making me realise the futility of this worry is posts like these from mainstream celebrities. When a person who is supposed to look perfect all the time talks about their insecurities and how they’re trying to break free from them, it resonates with all of us. And this doesn’t hold true only for millennials. For this generation that is growing up online, it is so important to catch a break from all the perfect-looking people on social media. And celebrities like Vidya Balan are leading the charge. More power to her, we say!

Related: 9 Body Positive Influencers On Instagram Who Are All About That Sass