Bodyshaming & Unrealistic Beauty Standards Ft. Khadeja

In this conversation I sit down with Khadeja, a content creator who has been sharing her life online for over five years. We go back to her early life in Hyderabad, her hostel days in Islamabad, and the winding road that led her to YouTube. But the heart of it is a raw talk about body shaming, unrealistic beauty standards, and why she chooses not to be vulnerable online anymore.

How it all started, from Hyderabad to YouTube

Khadeja was born and raised in Hyderabad, where she spent the first 17 years of her life. Her family is Sindhi, and she still speaks the language, something people are often surprised by. She had what she calls a standard childhood, but things shifted in her teenage years. “When I was growing up, around 12 to 18, we weren’t doing very well financially,” she tells me. Money was tight, and as the only daughter in a protective household, her world was small. She went to school and came home. There was no going out or eating out, and the constant whisper of log kya kahenge, what people will say, kept her parents on edge.

When it was time for university, she chose to study public administration in Islamabad. It wasn’t her first love, she had wanted architecture, but the entrance test didn’t work out. Still, she grew to genuinely enjoy the subject. “I still really like politics,” she says, “even though it’s gone to absolute crap.” But with limited pocket money and a need to make ends meet, she started a small business in her hostel room doing hairdos and hairstyles for other students. That Facebook page was the tiny seed that would later grow into a career.

YouTube happened almost by accident. She and a friend used to watch creators like Michelle Phan and Zoella and thought, why not try it in Pakistan? Her first video was “girls with the straightest hair” and it just clicked. “It’s such a fascinating concept that you just make videos of yourself and people relate with you, people learn something from you,” she remembers. So she kept going, even as she juggled internships, a parliamentary internship at the Sindh Assembly, a failed CSS attempt, and a job in digital marketing. Slowly, her channel started to pick up, and a few years in, it became sustainable enough to support her rent, bills, and equipment.

What hostel life really teaches you

Moving from a small city to a big one, from a sheltered home to a shared hostel room, was a leap. “When I was coming to hostel first, I was the most excited because independent life, American movies,” Khadeja laughs. But the reality was more complicated. She found friends among her hostel mates rather than her classmates, many of them from different cities. They visited each other’s hometowns, Multan, Lahore, and built a world together.

Hostel life stripped away the safety net. “I think it made me independent and very, very problem-solving sort of a situation,” she says. “You don’t have time to sulk because nobody is going to come and save you. You have to figure out a solution.” It taught her to tell the difference between a real problem and something not worth worrying about. It also taught her to let go. “What’s the point of sulking or worrying about something when you have to face it anyway?” She asks. That practicality, that refusal to linger on things she can’t change, still runs through her today.

The quiet weight of leaving home

After Islamabad came Karachi for work, and then marriage, and before she knew it, she had spent years away from Hyderabad. Before her wedding, she made a choice: she stopped taking work in Karachi, ended her lease, and moved back to Hyderabad for a few months. “I was like I need to spend more time with my family,” she says. She knew this time was precious, and the guilt of being away had been building.

That guilt is something I understand deeply, and I know so many of you do too. Khadeja describes it as a constant tug. Every time she says no to a plan with her mom, the guilt sits at the back of her head. Even now, as a married woman, she feels the unfairness of how life is structured. “The sad reality is that in this part of our life we actually spend more time with our spouse’s parents than we do with our own parents,” she says. “It just feels so unfair.” There’s no easy fix for this. It helps just to hear someone else name it, to know you aren’t the only one carrying that heaviness.

Carving out your own confidence

Khadeja’s content has always been different. She shows up in clothes she loves, talks about fashion and lifestyle, and never hides her body. She is not the sample-size ideal that most beauty standards push. And that is exactly why it matters.

Body shaming has followed her for years. She gets messages telling her she shouldn’t wear jeans because her thighs are too big. “I’m just like, I think they look good on me and a lot of other people seem to agree,” she tells me. But then a woman messaged her saying she hadn’t worn jeans her whole life because she was the same size and thought they didn’t look good. That moment stuck. “I asked her, who told you that? Did you look at yourself in the mirror and decide this doesn’t look good on me?” Khadeja explains that the hatred we direct outward often comes from not accepting ourselves. “When you look at yourself in the mirror and think I don’t look good, so anyone with my body cannot look good.”

She is clear that this is not about glorifying unhealthy habits. It’s about separating worth from size. “It’s about being fit, it’s about being healthy,” she says. “And it’s not about looking a certain way or fitting into a certain dress.” If your body is telling you to move more or eat better, listen to it. But that is not the same as starving yourself to meet someone else’s standard. The rise in eating disorders and the guilt attached to food worry her, especially for teenage girls who are still figuring out who they are. “We put our worth in women’s bodies,” she says. That connection needs to be broken.

When sharing becomes too much

For a long time, YouTube was her main platform. She made vlogs, shared her daily life, and tried to keep it real. But the comments were relentless. People criticized her face, her nose, her clothes in ways that had nothing to do with content. “I was just like, why are you so offended by how my face looks?” She says. The personal attacks started to spiral. It affected her self-esteem, her eating, her mental health. “It became really toxic and I was spiraling really bad. It wasn’t worth my mental health.”

So she stepped back. She shifted to Instagram, where she could control her space better, and stopped sharing so much of her personal life. She still doesn’t show her husband or her family often, because she can’t bear to hear strangers speak about them. Now she focuses on content that is researched, useful, and skill-based. “I just kind of cornered myself,” she admits. “I’ll just focus on sharing information type of videos instead of sharing my life.” It’s not that she thinks vulnerability is wrong. It’s that she gets to choose when and how much to give.

Let’s stop saying “thick skin”

There is this idea that if you put yourself online, you should be able to take the criticism. Grow thick skin, people say. Khadeja pushes back hard. “Why are you telling people to be thick-skinned when you can just not be rude?” She asks. “It’s putting the entire responsibility on the person that is going through it, like victims.” She draws a clear line: feedback on content is welcome, but commenting on how someone looks or their family looks is never okay. And when creators make entire videos critiquing other people for views, what are they really teaching? “Does that satisfy your soul when you go to sleep at night?” She asks.

What she wants is simpler: if something bothers you, unfollow or block. You don’t have to ruin someone’s day. It’s a call for basic kindness, and it sits at the center of why her content matters. She’s not just modeling outfits. She’s modeling what it looks like to take up space and refuse to shrink.

Why this conversation stays with you

Khadeja’s story is full of small details that hit close to home. The guilt of not visiting your parents enough. The comments on your body that you never asked for. The moment you decide your peace is worth more than a platform. She doesn’t pretend any of it is easy. But she sits here, in her jeans with her thighs, and tells you it’s okay to like what you see in the mirror. And that is the kind of energy I want to keep passing on.