The pressure to be beautiful in Bangladesh

[NANO]

"As women we are often compelled to portray our beautiful selves," says Habiba Nowrose, a 29-year-old photographer documenting the pressures on women in Bangladesh to be attractive.

"In that path to avail beauty we are made to strip off our individuality, stories and traumas." "We become anonymous even to ourselves and our identities remain concealed." The women in Habiba's photos look bright and colourful but their faces are entirely covered, representing a loss of the inner self even though outwardly the women have made great efforts to look beautiful. Habiba wants to draw attention to how much of themselves Bangladeshi women have to compromise to make others happy.Image NOWROSE Speaking to Bengali, Habiba said the idea for the series came after a "very bitter personal experience". Image JERIN Image caption Ms Nowrose says she has had to battle other people's expectations "When I graduated from university, I found people had a lot of expectations of me. I had to get married, have a baby, get a job with good salary. I have seen it happen to many girls around me - they are forced to forget what they actually want for themselves." Image NOWROSE In her first year as a photographer, Habiba felt that no matter how hard she worked it was never enough: "If you are a woman and trying to prove yourself, you have to work twice as hard as the men." Eventually Habiba felt trapped: "It seemed to me that I was losing myself as a person. Then I started working to make myself happy, to be honest to myself."