It is time to be Body-Normative now! The topic of toxic beauty standards is breaking through, and Waleed Shah puts everyday people at the front of the discussion in his debut photography book, Rock Your Ugly. Viki Shah talks to him to find out more.
With celebrities and public figures talking about mental health and the pressures of social media, men and women in the Middle East are baring it all to show the world that they too reject toxic beauty standards and want to rock their ugly. No-one in immune to mental health issues, and this book allows readers to see themselves in different stories and black and white photographs. The fact that through Rock Your Ugly young people in particular, can witness diverse people with everyday lives stripping bare to drive the mental health and body positivity conversation forward, is an important and inclusive aspect of the book.
Rock Your Ugly is a raw, unfiltered look into the lives of everyday people willing to bare all and reclaim those parts of themselves they have struggled to embrace. Rock Your Ugly is a reclamation of power through this one simple truth: we all have things we don’t like about ourselves…but why hide it, when we can rock it?
What made you do this?
In 2010 I hurt my back and I couldn’t work out anymore. I used to be a sportsman, a body builder. I had a body I was proud of. I couldn’t do anything because of my injury. Around 2016/2017 maybe 2018 I can’t remember. Throughout these years, I kept gaining weight and I was at a point where I was really unhappy with my body. I did a self-portrait and put it up online saying this is what my body looks like now. I’ve been a sportsman and I’ve been this and that. I don’t have the capacity to do anything about my body right now, so check back in with me next year. That really resonated with people, so I put down a note on my phone to explore everybody else’s body insecurities, but I didn’t do anything about it until two years later after my best friend passed away. I just needed something to get my mind off the grief, so I just picked a random project from my phone. It wasn’t called ‘Rock Your Ugly’ at the time, it was just something to explore. It kind of grew from there. It went from body issues to a whole array of things that dabbled with and kind of going into the aspects of what you go into in childhood and stuff like that. That’s kind of where it started.
We have come a long way and see a lot of change, but will it ever change totally?
Will it ever change totally? Probably not. People have been looking at their body and other people’s bodies and trying to make changes since day one, right? You go back to the 1800s, 1700s with paintings and people depicting themselves in different ways. When you see a painting by Da Vinci or whoever, sometimes when you X-ray the painting you will see that there was a painting behind it where the person didn’t like it and got the artist to redo it or retouch it or to change something about their appearance. I think people have been critical about their appearance forever and I don’t think that’s ever going to completely change. But I think with this newer age of information going faster than before, people have a voice to be able to educate and make smaller changes. Small changes more frequently, so probably it will change faster, but probably not completely change.
Even today, why do we see people falling for these so-called beauty standards?
I think it’s like a bad song on the radio. If a song gets played over and over, you will eventually start to like it and sing along to it. Subconsciously, it becomes a good song because it’s on the radio and it is validated by the radio people which used to be the gate keepers of the community, the music community. The beauty standards are you are being bombarded with what beauty should look like. With media and magazines and social media, nowadays. These are the gatekeepers, or the validators of what beauty is. I think it’s the same analogy going back to the bad song on the radio.
Is there anything like ‘ideal beauty’?
Ideal beauty? Of course not, even today different cultures have different versions of beauty in certain places in the Arab world or Africa a fuller body is more beautiful than a slimmer body because it shows status, that you can eat. Different cultures have different standards for beauty. There is no one ideal standard. What you are seeing is maybe because the media is oriented from the West where right now the standard of beauty is the smaller size, size zeros and 1s and 2s. That is what you see most of the time, but there are cultures where they definitely have different standards based on status, I guess!
How do we ‘opt out’ of unrealistic beauty standards without quitting beauty?
I think you curate what you consume, so for me, if it’s Instagram I will go in and unfollow the accounts that don’t do well for my mental health and my inspiration, which magazines you buy. I don’t think anyone buys magazines anymore. Control what you are bombarded with daily, is a very good first step. I don’t know about the next step; I haven’t done it yet. That’s what I did, I just cut out what I don’t want to be bombarded with.
Is this all happening due to the cosmetic industry or is it because of our pre-existing beliefs of what is pretty?
I don’t think it’s only the cosmetic industry, it’s general people’s vanity, I would say. Whatever industry, be it cosmetics or plastic surgery or even food, they take advantage of peoples’ vanity and that is something again that has existed from day one. Whatever industry is trying to sell you something, they will take advantage of your vanity, your greed, your fear all that stuff. it’s not just the cosmetic industry, but obviously the cosmetic industry is up there so even the food industry will take advantage of that.
Can ‘Rocking your Ugly’ lead to unhealthy people or people with unhealthy habits accepting their bodies rather than doing something about it?
In general, the response to “Rock your Ugly” is very positive, I was actually surprised it was this positive. Some of my campaigns get a lot of negative press, but this one was completely positive. A lot of people resonated with it. I’m kinda very proud of that one.
Lastly, what is your message to the people?
That’s a very good question. People with unhealthy habits accept their bodies, accept themselves without doing anything about it. That’s actually something I’ve been thinking about myself. I don’t know the answer to that. I’ll be honest with you. Especially the one argument that always comes up especially if you are around body positivity, let’s not promote obesity whereas it’s not on a specific person, it is usually a doctor, there’s a lot of people I’ve spoken to where they have gotten checks by the medical professionals, they aren’t obese, it’s kind of what their body shape looks like. They are considered healthy under certain guidelines. I am not sure exactly how to answer that question, but I am thinking about it. I don’t have an answer for you. I think it’s a work in progress.
Rock Your Ugly is priced at AED 150.
Available on https://thedreamworkcollective.com/
Waleed Shah was born and raised in the UAE. He is a chemical engineer by education and started his career working in the oil industry before discovering a love of photography. He has had the opportunity to work with talented local artists, and international legends passing through the UAE as well as some of the coolest brands out there. Waleed is an official Fuji-X-Photographer.
The main image used is Kimberley.
The Good:
The book connects us to REAL people who have developed a healthier and more realistic relationship with their bodies.
The Bad:
As Waleed says, ‘People with unhealthy habits accept their bodies, accept themselves without doing anything about it’. That is not good.
The Trendy:
If, in the past, the idea of body positivity was strongly associated with unattainable beauty standards but today it has transformed into a wide-reaching idea that includes everything that has to do with, our bodies!