Are We In A Quest To Be Beautiful Or A Quest To Make ‘Others’ Feel That We Are Beautiful?

A person or a thing beautiful to me might not be the same to someone else. It all depends on our perception of what beauty is. With numerous commercial ads on various personal care products, the perception of being beautiful has changed and been restricted to fair skin, no hair, thin and defined body, etc

In this present scenario, we have unknowingly become even more conscious of being beautiful. We are in a  quest to be beautiful or rather, in a quest to make others feel that we are beautiful.

Fairness creams and the false reality they has developed.

Celebrities are coming forward to post their original pictures without makeup. They are openly confessing how much it takes for them in terms of money and time, to look the way people feel they are naturally.

We all have read during our schooling that, the colour of our skin is dependent on amount of pigmentation, genetics and also our climatic conditions. Then why do we always have inclination towards fair looking skin compared to a dark-complexioned person, which is no way related to a person’s capabilities.

What is the meaning of ‘unwanted hair’! And why don’t men wax too?

The hair on our skin is another issue related to being beautiful. It does have some significance in terms of protecting our skin and keeping us warm. Apart from that, having hair on our skin is also because of the hormones in our body. But having hair on our bodies, especially for women, is a big no. It’s not a sign of being beautiful.

Our TV commercials, which constantly, like our fairness cream advertisements, depict that a girl is hesitant to wear her choice of clothes or go on a date or attend a party because of the hair on her skin. But truly speaking, the girl in the ad too, doesn’t have any hair on her skin. This indirectly makes it mandatory that having hair on the skin is not just a sign of not being beautiful but also not looking clean/ hygienic.

If it is not good to have hair, then why is it not included in our childhood good habits along with bathing or washing hands? Or why doesn’t everyone use medicines, just like vaccines, to suppress the hormones because of which we do have hair on our body.

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Our constant urge to look beautiful and impress or create positive impact on people around us, is just making us artificial, leaving huge profits to those companies. If we observe closely, we go to beauty clinics to get waxed or threaded, to remove the unwanted hair, going through all the pain. But do men ever go through all that?

Even they have hair and irregularly grown eyebrows. Truly speaking, I feel eyebrows which are not artificially shaped are always more beautiful than those which get shaped by threading or plucking. Their natural alignment looks beautiful, compared to the way they grow once they are shaped forcibly, changing their natural alignment. Why did we create this idea that by waxing unwanted hair and shaping our eyebrows, one looks beautiful? Who defined it as ‘unwanted’ hair?

I remember during my school days, we attended a kind of a sexual awareness education class. It was about the genital organs, puberty among girls and boys, axillary hair etc. I remember one of them saying it’s completely normal to have hair on our private parts too and is not to feel inferior about it.

The toxic body standards!

One more aspect normalised as beauty standards is physical measurements. Nowadays, being thin with noticeable curves on the body has become a matter of beauty. Being thin or being fat cannot be a matter to judge if a person is beautiful.

I once felt surprised to hear an educated woman telling another woman with small breast that she might not get enough milk for her baby because of her breast size. I felt pity of  how unaware some people are despite being educated. How does the breast size effect a woman’s capability of producing milk inside her body? It all depends on our hormones. We don’t even realise how our body and organs works. But we ourselves decide how our body should be, to look beautiful as everyone says.

In a rush to become beautiful with perfect measurements, sometimes people tend to use unhealthy and unscientific methods which claim to reduce weight drastically ultimately damaging their health.

Our hair style is another important aspect of beauty. Our commercials on hair products like shampoos, conditioners, serum etc claim to help in getting bouncy, thick and black long hair. Yet no one in real life has such hair with those products alone. It again depends on our lifestyle and our genetics. People who braid their hair are considered untrendy. Why do the same people not realise that it’s matter of personal choice whether to let the hair flow freely or to braid it.

Our body naturally has some odour, unique to ourselves. Of course, not the bad sweat smell. Even our bodily odour indicates if something is not good with any of our organs. But too much use of deodorant or perfumes makes us feel as if we don’t smell good without that or that someone who doesn’t use any, smells bad.

In this age of beauty consciousness, often being beautiful is perceived to be as being healthy, hydrated, a good and having luxurious lifestyle etc. Strange, isn’t it?

Do you care more about yourself or the opinion of others?

But in real life, leading a healthy lifestyle should be for our sake, not for others or just because our favourite celebrity is doing it. We look beautiful if we are healthy, but not the other way around. The dark circles under our eyes indicate that we are stressed or that our body is lacking enough sleep. One should have enough sleep not to get rid of those dark circles but for our body’s metabolism to function properly.

It is for us to decide whether we love ourselves more or those around us, and to remember that we are keeping our health at stake for the sake of others. We must keep ourselves hydrated not so our skin shall look healthy, but because we require our organs to function well and the mechanism of our body to function properly.

Every human being has some bodily hair, with little variations in thickness but it’s absolutely ok to have it. Being healthy is important not being thin or being fat to please others. It sometimes will not be in our hands. Both being thin and being fat are attributed to various factors like genes, hormones, etc. One need not try to eat everything everyone suggests to put on some weight or to shed weight.

Using personal care products isn’t a bad thing, but it has to be a personal choice. A person who is not interested in those products or beauty treatments need not be seen as alien… it’s their personal choice!

Image Source: Instagram -zainabxanwar, Facebook – Triory

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