Richa Chadha has praised Salman Khan for addressing postpartum body-shaming on Bigg Boss 20, applauding his stand against the practice and highlighting the importance of showing greater sensitivity towards women after childbirth.
Richa Chadha has praised Salman Khan for speaking out against online trolling and body-shaming during the latest Bigg Boss 20 weekend Ka Vaar episode. Salman Khan’s remarks on age, weight, appearance, and motherhood have sparked conversations about the scrutiny faced by women, particularly new mothers, over their bodies.
Salman Khan addressed the issue without naming anyone. Speaking about the tendency to troll people over different aspects of their lives, he said, “Why do you want to troll? Uske wazan par, uske looks par, uske khaandan par, kisi ki smile par, kisi ke flop par, kisi ki maa banne par, aap apni upbringing dikha rahe hain.”
His comments came amid online discussion around the trolling faced by Katrina Kaif following her appearance at the Ambani family’s Ganpati celebrations with her husband Vicky Kaushal, who recently became a mother, and was subjected to comments about her postpartum Appearance and weight.
Reacting to Richa Praises Salman Khan, she told News18 that men, more often than women, are the people behind the accounts. “I didn’t know he spoke about it, but it’s great! It’s a magnanimous thing to do. One shouldn’t pay heed. Poor men are so limited in their thinking capacities, and they’ll never have the profound experience of giving birth,” she says.
Hitting back at them for mocking new mothers, she asserts, “They cannot exist without us. All of them came from the womb. In the natural order of things, if you start to make fun of mothers, it backfires very badly. Every single individual who sat with a stupid paunch and a receding hairline and made comments on women’s bodies is unhappy with their own body.”
For the unversed, Richa has once opened up about facing body shaming and battling an eating disorder due to intense pressures of fitting the mould of a quintessential heroine in Bollywood. She had also publicly condemned the vicious online attacks targeted at peers like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for their postpartum weight gain.
On a related note, Richa is now foraying into the non-fiction space with a series titled Musafiri, which she believes is an extension of her postpartum journey. The upcoming YouTube show, which she has created, written, produced, and hosted, sees her shunning the sheen and sharing an unfiltered version of herself before the camera – acne, bare skin, and no make-up.
“I can’t bother about vanity here. I can’t think that I’m overweight from the last time people saw me… I’m making a show about my postpartum journey. So, my body is as is, my hair is as is, and my skin has acne. That’s just how it is. I can’t get very decked up. In an episode, you’ll see me roaming around in the bylanes of Dharavi. I didn’t want to look like an out-of-place foreigner,” she says.
Richa further continues, “I’ll anyway look like an out-of-place person in that kind of a get-up – even if I wear trousers and shoes. In some pockets, there will be people who’ll say, ‘Who’s she? Isko kahin dekha hai.’ But I’ve to blend in and do my work. Very few people recognised us and came to talk to us while we were filming. It’s a great quality to blend in.”
Richa Chadha’s appreciation adds to the conversation around postpartum body-shaming, with Salman Khan’s comments on Bigg Boss 20 highlighting the need for greater empathy and sensitivity towards women after childbirth.
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