Artist Era Tangar had always had a problem with how her body looked. Until recently that is. If you follow Tanger on Instagram (@blindlyfloating), you will be wowed by her sketches, but also her recent posts on body confidence. In one of her posts, she shows off her bare back; in another, she stands in front of a mirror with bare legs; in yet another, she faces the camera wearing a jacket with nothing underneath, her breasts camouflaged by a few illustrations
Tangar, a UP girl who is now based out of New Delhi, put the pictures out and has been flooded with both kinds of messages - lewd ones from men, and congratulatory ones from women who are inspired. "There's a picture in which I face the camera - it's one I didn't even like. It showed me in a way I had never seen myself before. The look in my eyes and my body language were all alien to me. But there was this energy in the picture, and so I put it up. I realised that the positive messages mattered to me more than the bad ones. So, I really don't think I care about what people think. This one's for me"
Tangar is just one of the many uninhibited people on Indian social media sites, or dating apps, who are not shy about sharing their nude or semi-nude pictures. No wonder #sendnudes is a popular meme topic and an often asked question in the beginning of a relationship or a one-night stand. Instagram users in India would have also seen a steady rise in ordinary (and by that, we mean, non-celebrities) people putting up more revealing pictures of themselves, for a multitude of reasons, some of which are freedom of expression and body positivity. It's become the order of the day
A New Delhi-based writer, 28, tells us that sometimes people have even refused to take forward a conversation with her on a dating app if she refused to send a nude. "It's okay as long as you don't show your face. You are anyway planning to get naked with this person, so it's okay to give them a sneak peak"
A 27-year-old pilot, who flies between Dubai and Mumbai, often sends d*** pictures to women he meets on dating apps, but only after he has gotten to know them a little better. It's all good, he says, in the world that we live in now. "My d*** pictures also have parts of my upper body because if one has a good body, why not flaunt it?
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