Tall, strapping and statuesque, Shivalli M. Chouhan, 34, doesn't look fat, but she insists she is. "It's not my self-image. It's what others tell me," smiles the civil servant with the Indian Defence Accounts Service. It's what her teacher had said long back when she was chosen for a television dance show in school. It's what some of her batchmates had whispered when she won those beauty contests in college and university. Resentful of the constant pressure of other people's unending desire for her to be thin she decided to excel in everything else but looks. She topped her university, did her PhD in economics, passed the gruelling civil service exams and has just finished her stint as the first woman civil servant on the country's peacekeeping forces abroad. A happy wife and a mother, she says, "I am determined not to be bogged down." The talking point so long has been the "girth of the nation". There's a turn in the tide and a new focus on women now. Urban Indian women are piling on the pounds and doing so faster than men. Three out of four women have waistlines measuring well over 80 cm or 32 inches (the danger score in obesity) while one out of four are either overweight or obese, reports the latest National Family Health Survey III (NFHS). In 2004, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) reported over 50 per cent women between age 35 and 59 in urban India, compared to 40 per cent men, to be overweight. In 2006, 75 per cent urban women were found to be apple-shaped, compared to 58 per cent men, by the 60-country International Day of Evaluation of Abdominal Obesity (IDEA) study. Women face markedly different risks, too. World Health Organisation (WHO) data suggests that overweight women face six times more disease burden than men-from diabetes to heart attacks, 10 types of cancer to dementia, asthma to Alzheimer's, psoriasis to polycystic ovary syndrome, miscarriage to infertility. But why does obesity hit women harder? Conventional wisdom blames women for their condition. "On the surface, they are eating too much high-calorie food, not burning it off with enough activity, splurging on lifestyle, spurning household chores," says cardiologist, Dr Naresh Trehan. Over 77 per cent women with full-time domestic help were found to put on weight faster and more than those with part-timers (47 per cent) or none (27 per cent), by Praween Agrawal of Indian Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai in 2004. "But by that logic, men should bloat up more," says Trehan. "Most Indian men don't do any housework and spend their workdays behind a desk. Also career women, juggling work and home, can't exactly be called sitting ducks." Yet, in a study involving 3,000 executives, Trehan's team had found obesity in 43 per cent women, compared to 24 per cent men. Vital stats 3 out of 4 city women have a waistline over 32 inches, the danger score in obesity. A 5.5 ft woman faces societal fat bias at 73kg. A 5.9 ft man does so at 107 kg. Weighty women twice as likely to be depressed and consume 20% more calories. 75 per cent Indian women in the cities are apple-shaped, while 58 per cent men are so. Source: AIIMS, NFHS, IJO, IDEA 2004-2008 The answer lies elsewhere. Unlike men, obesity is not just a consequence of lifestyle excesses brought on by new affluence in women, hold experts. And "psychology of obesity" is the jargon doing the rounds. For the first time, new compulsions, demands, aspirations and disappointments in the modern woman's life are being considered as factors that could trap them into plus-sized bodies. "The prevailing misconception is that fat people are lazy, eat all the time, and lack self-discipline," says neuropsychiatrist Dr Rajesh Parikh at Mumbai's Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre. "This fat bias is believed to lead to guilt, shame, low self-esteem, depression, a vicious cycle of using food in response to negative emotions-boredom, sadness, anger, feelings of emptiness, work and family pressures-and more difficulty in keeping weight under control." How does the "fat bias" work? Dietician Veena Aggarwal, head of R&D at VLCC Healthcare Ltd, Delhi, recounts the story of a mother whose 10-year-old son refused to let her attend the parent-teacher meeting at school. "I don't want anyone to see you. They'll tease me to death," shouted the boy tearfully when taken to task by the parents. In a country where, until recently, fat was linked unabashedly with prosperity, there's a new intolerance for weight gain. "You are not good enough, is the message family and society send to overweight women," Aggarwal points out. It only takes a modest weight gain for a woman to experience weight discrimination, but men can gain far more weight before experiencing a similar bias, says a new report from Yale University, published last month in the International Journal of Obesity (IJO). That's exactly what has been plaguing the Indian courts since 2006, when Indian Airlines decided to ground hostesses for being "too fat to fly". Tools Comment Print Email Digg it! Del.icio.us! Technorati! Newsvine! RSS Feed Complete View A A AThe grounded women blamed the airline's changing vision of Indian feminine ideal-abandoning the buxom prototype in favour of a westernised, skinny model-to compete with private carriers who favour leggy hostesses in high heels and skimpy skirts. The Yale study found that women begin to experience a noticeable weight bias-such as problems at work or difficulty in personal relationships-when they reach a body mass index (BMI) of 27. For a 5-ft-5-inch woman, discrimination starts once she reaches a weight of 73 kg. A 5-ft-9-inch man needs to bloat up to 107 kg to face the fat bias. Overstretched waistlines also reflect overstretched lives. As India's "new worldly women" rejig their lives, flood into higher education and the job market, marry later, have fewer children, balance home and work, they also take on too much load. At the workplace, they are found to be as, if not more, committed than men, reports a 2006 study by the Shell Group on 12,000 young professionals. And one in five women brings office work home everyday. Yet not much has changed on the home front. Women are still expected to be Ms Perfect