Grade 11 Student’s Graphic Novel on Body Shaming | From AIS with L♥ve

Anusree is in Grade 11. For her Creativity, activity, service (CAS) project, this self-determined student is working on publishing a graphic novel about body positivity and body shaming. She explains why, in her own words. 

“This is my first year CAS project. I started this during the December holidays. So far, I have some sketches and I haven’t started the final piece yet. My main message is to ignore what people say. It’s your body, it’s your figure, it’s your life. Do what you want to do. Of course, there are elements such as working out and eating healthy, but those are all very personal. For example, I do workout, but that’s not because I want to lose weight. It’s because I feel like when I exercise my mind works faster.

This topic is something of an experience to me because I’ve always been body shamed. I don’t want to name names, but a couple of friends, my extended family. Of course, when I was younger it didn’t really matter to me but now as I grow older I start to understand the words and how it’s affecting me. Obviously, I don’t accept it. 

I think this book will really help students, teachers, and anyone really, to learn how to express themselves however they are because it’s not really important.  

My book so far has no title, I’m still coming up with different names. I’m planning on using shapes, rather than people because I think it’s a different approach to comic books. I think with that, it’s going to be much easier to convey the message I’m trying to share with the use of shapes like circles, squares and rectangles. The way it’s designed will help me talk about larger bodies, smaller bodies, and just our community as a whole. 

I think for as long as I can remember – if I analyse it deeper, a lot of my cousins have always been body shamed. I have two younger sisters who according to society have this idealistic body type, so it has been harder for me to always be compared to my two younger sisters. Of course, my parents are always supportive. They try to tell me to just ignore it because what people say is irrelevant. But of course, as a child, you tend to really think deep into everything someone is saying to you. I think I read this somewhere that ‘No one’s born with insecurities, but society just tells you what to be insecure about.’ I think that’s so correct because you don’t know yourself whether this is right or wrong. Everyone just tells you, ‘You shouldn’t look like this, you shouldn’t be like this.’ I think that’s really immature and inappropriate. 

I think I will possibly publish the book for the school, just to start with. I really want to educate younger students as they become older because when I’ve been body shamed it has started with younger kids first saying things like, ‘Oh, you’re so fat,’ and just rude comments like comparing someone to an animal. I think starting with the younger students is much more important. I definitely think I will publish this book on social media because I think everyone needs to hear it.”