I have conducted research on feminist and development issues for some years now, a fair deal of which deals with women's mobility in public spaces. A trend that I have noticed in my life with respect to the representation of women in public domains, in online or tangible spaces, has been the exclusion of certain types of bodies while glorifying some others. While the media creates pressure online on women to look a certain way, fat-vigilantism has also been on the rise in real life, breeding trolls and fat-haters. Opinions of women are not taken seriously and any public or political statement of a fat person is reduced to lewd and hurtful comments about their bodies. Not only is this becoming a distressing issue globally, it is adding additional baggage to the already overlapping forms of discriminations that brown bodies in my part of the world are facing. This issue has shaped various aspects of my life and personality and my paper about representation of fat bodies in public spaces as a political statement has been selected at the University of Amsterdam to be presented in January. This issue is very close to me, as it is to various women, who are treated unequally and trolled because of their size, despite all that they have to contribute to their families and society.

Although the wonderful organisers have been kind enough to try and arrange accommodation for the visit, I would need some help with the money for my visa and travel and am requesting for some help through this fundraiser. This will also be a great platform for me to represent a body positivity platform called Embodied Narratives, internationally, that I have set up with my co-researcher from TISS, Mumbai.

My paper presentation will only be possible with your help! Here is the link to the conference. Thank you in advance!