Last month, at a workshop in IIT Gandhinagar, I attended a barcamp for the first time. The idea is simple and a little terrifying. Every participant is both the audience and the speaker.
You put up a sticky note with your topic, and you get twenty minutes to speak. My note said “Self-love as a woman.” It sat in one of the last slots of the day, and more than once, I wanted to pull it down.
Two fears held me back.
First, that nobody would turn up.
Second, that people would find my topic very boring — everyone else was speaking on such high-powered topics, and here I was, speaking about something as simple as self-love, something people typically don’t take very seriously.
Finally, I had to talk myself into it.
I told myself I must take my own advice, and even if it is very difficult, show some love to myself and give that talk. It would be good for my confidence. This is a topic I love, but I rarely get the chance to speak about it to a group of strangers.
So I left the note up and walked into the room.
To my surprise, the first few people to walk in were men! “Self-love as a woman,” I had written — and yet they came. I took that as a positive sign. The first person was a professor of philosophy, and we had an interesting discussion about self-love and human existence on the whole.
Then another man offered the opposite perspective — how men perceive it when women talk about self-love. This was illuminating, because I did not have to say anything. It was said by someone else.
When I asked everyone to give their definition of self-love, the definitions were incomplete, but together, we could build one.
They spoke of having a hobby, of prioritising health, going on trips, acknowledging mental health is a thing and more. I was happy that men and women both were looking at self-love in this holistic way.
Yet nobody mentioned the one thing I consider most important: not looking for validation from others. For me, that is the biggest obstacle to self-love, and it must feature in its definition. Everybody knows we should have a hobby and protect our health. Nobody thinks about doing all of this irrespective of what others think of us.
Here’s a definition of self-love I swear by:
Taking care of your physical, emotional and mental health without looking for validation from other is self-love.
Then came the question that stayed with me. If men are the breadwinners, why should society not expect women to make sacrifices in lieu of that?
To all those who think the same in 2026, here are two things worth considering.
One, even when women are breadwinners in today’s society, they are still expected to sacrifice, not men.
Two, men are never asked to earn at the expense of their mental and physical health. Their well-being is always the priority in the household. So why not women’s?
When I walked out of that room, I was a more confident person. I am now very sure that in future, I can talk about this topic openly with anyone, man or woman, in any setting and background.
Self-love may seem trivial against societal expectations. But the attendance at that barcamp, even the 7-8 people, giving their day to conversations like these showed me it is not trivial at all.
I always say that if my words can change the course of even one life in my whole lifetime, my work here would be done.
That day, in a small room at the end of a long schedule, I think I took that first step.
