So What Is Your Definition Of Beauty, Really?

So what is your definition of beauty? Fair skin, lustrous hair, great figure, or confidence, good health, and determination to be a good human being?

I have a very nagging habit of asking anyone and everyone about “What is that one thing which impresses you the most in a woman?” and to my surprise the responses have ranged from fair skin to long lustrous hair to slender figure and flawless complexion, but not many believe in responding to this question with answers not related to physical appearance! Some of my male acquaintances have been open enough to point out that physical assets of a woman are much more interesting than her face or hair as that’s what attracts them the most.

I have grown up learning that ‘beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder‘. In that case as most of the beholders prefer restricting the beauty to physical appearance, I wonder if beauty is actually skin deep! This also makes me ponder over the contradictions in both these quotes!

What is beauty? Beauty isn’t what we look at in the mirror, it isn’t what we can buy in creams and gels by shelling out some money, it isn’t what the most famous fashion designers ask us to wear. Beauty is the sense you feel deep inside you no matter whether you are ‘fair’ or ‘dark’, no matter whether you are wearing makeup or not, no matter whether you are fat or slender!

Beauty, instead is the pride, the confidence that’s brimming in you. It’s the feeling that you get when you help people around you and they in return give you the brightest smile possible as you support them to resolve their issues!

In this ‘modern’ era, when ‘not so beautiful’ woman are achieving the most in their life, isn’t it needed for us to realize that girls should not be judged by their beauty!

‘Beauty’ by the definition we have grown up with, is God gifted, we don’t have much of a control in deciding our complexion. It’s a complex game of the genes playing around and deciding our physical appearance.

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‘Beauty’ by the definition in not being skin deep, is something that we can inculcate within us, something that we can control and enhance further. Beauty lies in our confident steps, our achievements, our generosity, our head held high irrespective of how we look!

Silicones can give us the best breast implants but do they also help us give a golden heart? Instead they would give us an extra dose of being egoist and smug over a figure which is just a result of some surgeries! How hypocritical of us to consider God being the greatest, and then tampering with his gifts by applying cream, wearing makeup and undergoing surgeries because the society terms it as ‘ugly’!

Wouldn’t it be a great world to live in, when parents stop worrying about their daughter’s complexion and instead spend the same amount of energy to give their girl a pair of wings to soar high in the sky irrespective of their complexion or physical appearance?

When it’s more important for a daughter in law to be successful and confident than being fair and slender?

When we stop worrying about our pimple marks but rather show them off with an air of pride and confidence because pimples don’t define our beauty?

Isn’t it unfair to teach our children that only fair is beautiful? How sad of us to make our children mug up the rhyme “Chubby cheeks, dimple chins, rosy lips” and feeding onto them at such a tender age that only ‘beautiful’ kids can become mother’s pet or a teacher’s pet!

While I still continue with my quest of understanding the rationale behind beauty being skin deep, I would request you all to try not to limit beauty to a pack of creams, makeup boxes and branded dresses, but a combination of confidence, determination, hardship, success, failure, achievements, independence, that can’t be bought by shelling out some pennies!

Image source: shutterstock

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