Entertainment

Momina Mustehsan gets bullied on anti-bullying post

Pakistan’s prominent singer Momina Mustehsan has been under scrutiny after posting pictures of herself during her battle with depression.

By Web Desk
September 07, 2018

Pakistan’s prominent singer Momina Mustehsan has been under scrutiny after posting pictures of herself during her battle with depression.

The Coke Studio sensation had taken to Instagram to post a letter to the late model Anam Tanoli earlier this week. Along with the poignant caption were a series of pictures of the artist herself during what she terms were her ‘times of turmoil.’

View this post on Instagram

This is a picture of me from when I was going through turmoil not very long ago. It happens to the best of us. Mental health is just as important as physical health, and we all hit points in our lives sometimes when all seems to be falling out of our control. Dear Anam, I’m sorry you had to give up. I’m sorry I didn’t understand the intensity of how much you were hurting. I know you were trying your best to be positive and you were a champ. I was super proud of how far you had come in the 9 years I had known you and the person you had grown to become. I swear you had the strength to keep fighting back, staying strong, and standing tall. But you just needed to hear more of that from the people around you, a little more often. I’m so sorry.. I know how it feels when you hit a point so low that it makes you feel like giving up. We all know that feeling. Every single person is fighting their own battle from behind the face we put up for society to make it look like all is under control. Fortunately or unfortunately, with the growth of social media, random people’s uncalled-for opinions and hate speech make their way to us. Now more than ever, we need to learn to love and value ourselves, and KNOW our own selves and our own worth, so that peoples opinions of us don’t get to us and impact our perception of ourselves. For the trolls: Let people be. Give them the right to be human sometimes. Give them the liberty to make those occasional mistakes. Because without that, no one can ever learn or grow. Reflect and focus your energies on fixing and working on yourself more than scrutinizing, judging and putting others down. Let’s please all shun bullying and hate speech. When you see it happening to someone, please stand up for them and make it stop. Build each other up, don’t be a bystander watching someone being tormented. #BullyingIsNeverOkay

A post shared by Momina Mustehsan (@mominamustehsan) on

However, soon after her post opposing bullying, the musician herself also became a target of hate for the photos that appeared to be too professional making her ‘look pretty while battling depression.’

Stylist Anaum Hammad had been one of the critics saying: “Depression does not look professionally clicked with this pretty, sad girl aesthetic. I’ve been through severe depression where all I could do for nine months was sleep. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, and that’s how my body and brain reacted.”

She went on to state: “To have an individual misrepresent depression this way is insulting to me. I feel sick to my stomach and angry. Misrepresentation of mental illness and the disability to truly understand it is a huge part of the problem. How can you take this responsibility so lightly?”

On the other hand, famed fashion photographer Muzi Sufi had also jumped on the bandwagon terming Momina’s photos as ‘insensitive’.

Responding to the backlash, the Afreen singer stated: “If someone is brave enough to let someone photograph their broken self in a time of extreme turmoil, she should be encouraged and given strength, instead of being judged and described as a ‘pretty, sad aesthetic girl’.”

Momina went on further to clear the air saying: “Everyone is ever willing to be photographed looking happy and pretty but I think there are hardly any who are okay showing their real face, especially in crisis.”

“My photographers had already reached and I told them I wasn’t emotionally well. If they wanted to take pictures of me, I only wanted to be real and let them capture what I was really going through. I was sick of faking a smile,” she revealed further. 

View this post on Instagram

(The screenshots after my statement are from @muzisufi @anaumh’s instagram) More now than ever, these things need to be addressed. I’m not one who pays much heed to what other people say, especially on social media, but the narrative around mental illnesses and depression needs to stop being jeopardized. Enough is enough. It’s important to call out people who put others and their emotions down, judge them for no reason and spread hate. The credibility of someone’s pain/turmoil isn’t for you to judge. As @marixm_g99 commented, “The aim is to de-stigmatize, not compete in who’s the better depression representative” @pictroizzah #BullyingIsCriminal #BackOffBullies @anaumh @muzisufi

A post shared by Momina Mustehsan (@mominamustehsan) on