Beauty

I’m going to be 25 this December. Having lived only around 25 years on this planet, I may have less experience compared to you, also adding to the fact that I consider myself very very ignorant when it comes to the matters of the world or as one calls it “current affairs” and “general knowledge”. Given this background about myself, I would like to have a take on the topic of “Beauty” in this post, probably a sensitive / controversial topic, but I’m okay with that. This post is solely based on my life experience and is all about my opinions.

Given this is based on my life experience, I would like to say where I hail from. I’m an Indian, I live in India, and have been living here since I was born. I have travelled only twice outside India for very very short periods. Given India is a pretty big country and a very diverse one too, I must give more details for narrowing down the exact places. I currently live in Chennai city in India, and have been living here for the past 15 years (since 2005). I have lived in few other places too when I was younger, as we travelled a lot as my Dad worked in a bank and got relocated a lot - it’s pretty usual for someone working in a bank. Chennai is the south of India. These other places were in South and North of India. My mother tongue is Tamil, in which I can speak, read and write a bit too, but I predominantly learned English and Hindi in school, where Hindi is another famous language in India. But I must say, I don’t think I’m good or pro at any language :P

Now, let’s start with the first thing about me. When I was born, I was too “fair” or “white”. I was so “white” that people were surprised. Now I’m what people call “brown” or just “black”. Now, many of my relatives just keep repeating the phrase “You were so fair when you were young” in Tamil. They add something extra to it - “Ippo nee Karuthuta” in Tamil. If I have to literally translate that, it would be “Now you have blackened”. Yeah, that’s what they keep saying.

I guess here in the South, in my surroundings, I have noticed in my experience that color of the skin is quite a thing. You should hear how some people around me talk about new born kids. The talks usually go like “Congratulations! How’s the kid?” and later usually there’s some talk or gossip with others about how “white” or “black” the kid is.

And that doesn’t end there. Here in India, a lot of marriages are “arranged marriages”, where the parents match two people together and plan a wedding!!! You should see the things that happen during the match. The talks are usually like “How does the girl look?” “How does the boy look?” . You will hear all the things like “tall”, “short”, “thin”, “fat”, “fair”, “black”, and oh, there’s also another term “Maan Niram” in Tamil, it translates to “Deer’s color”, which is usually to indicate the “brown” color of the skin, which is mid way for them between “fair” and “black”. And then there are tons of other things considered for the match, this was just the from the “beauty” point of view.

This hasn’t stopped just there, personally, I have seen people including me who keep getting unsolicited comments about their body. I have seen a friend get called as a “cow” and she didn’t react much and I don’t know what the hell I was doing standing there with anger inside me but not talking back.

I have been personally told that my “neck looks thicker” or “neck looks thinner”, or that I bulked up or put on weight, short for “I have become fat”. All unsolicited comments from work colleagues, family. I usually just don’t react to it much. I just smile and walk away. Only once I did respond with something like “Thanks for the unsolicited comment about my body” when I couldn’t control my anger. Even if people are so concerned about me putting on weight, especially abnormal weight, getting obese, affecting my health, I don’t know if unsolicited comments is the right way to show the concern.

Some of these may look like they aren’t making sense or relating to beauty, but I think they do. A lot of people might have the wrong ideas about “beauty” is what I feel, either consciously or subconsciously. Many people still think that beauty is what they see in movies, “white” is beauty, “thin” is beauty, all the photos of movie stars, models, comedians and celebrities on social media is beauty. Some may even call it “external beauty” to show that it’s the “beauty in what you see”. I think that there’s all sorts of “external beauty” and not just what the general media has defined for us. I also think that there’s a lot of inner beauty, the real beauty, that people are missing or not seeing or are reluctant or ignorant to see. If you go out in the world and see all the people who are doing good deeds, actions that lift humanity, actions that help a complete society that’s struggling, actions that are pure form of love, all those people may not have what the general people call “beautiful faces or bodies”. But what they don’t see is, they have got a beautiful heart, a loving heart, that’s more valuable according to me than the “external beauty”. I hope everyone values the inner beauty in others. It’s a big hope, but I think it’s possible in the upcoming generations.

I have also seen some people not like themselves or not like how they “look”. Let’s promote self love, where one loves themselves regardless of how they “look” from the outside.