P SISTER ACT
—SAMEERA REDDY, ACTOR & BODY POSITIVITY CHAMPION
“AS A CHILD, I WAS OVERWEIGHT AND HAD A STAMMER. HAVING TWO SUCCESSFUL, GORGEOUS SISTERS MADE IT A LITTLE BIT HARDER FOR ME”
When Sameera was a teen, she was a bundle of nerves and insecurities. With two popular, confident older sisters—former actor Meghna Reddy and model and VJ Sushma Reddy—she always struggled with self-confidence. And to make matters worse, she had a bad stammer.
“It put me in a bit of a hole,” she says, “where I didn’t feel like getting out and meeting people. Having two successful, gorgeous sisters made it a little bit harder for me.”
Her sisters, of course, were nothing but supportive but, like many young women, Sameera wasn’t comfortable in her own body.
“I just didn’t feel good. When you grow up plump, you start to equate yourself and your self-worth with the way you look and what your weight is—I did that for far too long. It’s been a constant up and down and constant mental struggle,” Sameera says.
This feeling of being constantly judged was why, when she entered the glamorous world of Bollywood, Sameera was one of the pickiest of celebrities. “I couldn’t sleep without a particular hair-tie and I needed a lip mask, an d I had 1,000 creams, an d I n eeded ear-plugs because soun d would bother me,” she laughs.
It was after she got married and had her first child that Sameera’s life changed. Unfortunately, this involved “falling apart and then coming back together”.
“After my first child (Hans) was born, I became huge,” she explains. “I was 104 kgs and I broke completely, because I just couldn’t deal with it. People couldn’t recognise me, nothing made sense anymore, and I’d reached a point of almost self-loathing. I realised then that I really didn’t love myself at all. It’s really sad how hard I was on myself.”
It wasn’t just the extra kilos that weighed her down. Sameera suffered from postpartum depression and was also diagnosed with alopecia areata, an auto-immune disease that causes your hair to fall out. “I hit rock bottom,” she says.
That’s when she decided to take control of things, telling herself that she couldn’t keep repeating the same cycle over an d over, an d decided to change the narrative.
EVER REDDY
“My mental health was at stake,” says Sameera. “I had to redefine everything, and I just had to have the conviction that everybody around me could judge me as much as they wanted, but I owed it to myself to keep evolving— anyone can at any age.”
Luckily for Sameera, she had a great example right in front of her. “My motherin-law [who features regularly in Sameera’s Reels] has done it! She’s 66 now, and today she’s this shining content creator with her own sense of style, and she’s super-cool! I’m so proud of her,” she says. “People should be allowed to evolve however they want to evolve. But unfortunately, this is a world where you’re judged at all levels, whether you’re an actor or a regular teen or a housewife.”
The first step on this journey towards changing the narrative was to show people the real, unfiltered her. When she posted her first raw, unfiltered picture to social media, Sameera was terrified.
“I had just gotten on to social media, an d I was overwhelmed by how perfect everybody