Overcoming Stereotypes of Beauty

chillibreeze writer — Anshulika Chawla

The day I had been waiting for finally arrived. I was going to get engaged to the ultra popular captain of my college’s cricket team. The occasion was grand and so was the preparation. I spent the whole week buying a new pair of sandals, sewing sequins onto my black dupatta to give the appearance of a star-studded night sky, straightening my hair to make them fall elegantly down my shoulders and… blah blah blah! I wanted to look my best. But all my efforts to stun the gathering were shattered when I looked at myself in the mirror.

My lehanga looked outdated, my hair lacked the shine and my lipstick failed to create the desired pout. Tears started rolling down my cheeks. I was nowhere close to the standard of beauty that I wanted to achieve. You must be thinking what a boring crib I am. But I am not alone to experience this fate. There are so many women today who feel they don’t measure up when it comes to their looks.

Ever wondered why? The answer is simple. We are bombarded today with images of what the ‘perfect woman’ ought to look like. She is tall and shapely with shining hair, big dark lovely eyes, flawless skin and a generous smile exposing two rows of gleaming white teeth. She rarely looks older than 25 and whatever she wears, she looks perfect. Our culture judges women and we judge ourselves against this standard.

Just pick up any glossy-paged Sunday supplement and you will find all the possible information on cosmetic surgery, laser treatment, Botox injections, figure correction…the list is endless. Magazines carry articles that extol the virtues of diet, make-up, exercise and a myriad other procedures to refashion us. Through every possible medium, women are urged to improve their image, enhance their beauty, change their looks and develop themselves in some way for the better.

“I have spent a fortune from visiting beauticians to laying myself on the operation table for plastic surgery—all to enhance my own self-esteem,” says Richa Yadav, IT Manager in a leading MNC. It is ironical that women 20 years ago suffered from low self-esteem because of their dependable status and limited opportunities and today, women feel less than normal and unworthy of any opportunity. Is this what we have achieved in the name of 'liberation'?

This is not liberation but confinement. Yes, women today are confined in a trap of society’s notion of what is beautiful and what is not. Ruchi Jain, Lecturer of Sociology at M.C.M D.AV. College says, "The modern day beauty culture in which women are trapped is much more rigid and cruel than the patriarchal system of the yester years."

The need of the hour is a change of our perception and not of our body. According to Naomi Wolf in Beauty Myth, "You do not win by struggling to the top of a caste system; you win by refusing to be trapped within one at all. The woman wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to truly see her."

Beauty has nothing to do with hierarchy. What I see as beauty, you might see as ugliness. So my dear friends, let’s stop running and apologizing and take pleasure in the age-old maxim, "Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder."

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—About our writer:

Anshulika says, "I am a post graduate in English Literature and a freelance journalist by profession. I am a poet at heart born to see the world through rose colored spectacles. I am passionate about books, traveling, reading varied literature and writing stories."

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