Growing up, I had internalised a notion of beauty, and the models on the ramps and the actresses on screen had become my inspiration. I remember that I wanted to look like them in every possible way.
Wanting to have a slim body was my mantra, even though I was as petite as patriarchy wanted me to be. I remember being on a fruit diet for weeks and then finally getting to hear what my ears desperately wanted to – “Hey, you have lost so much weight… you look so pretty, like a model,” from a classmate.
There is no doubt that there is a prescribed model of beauty that is universally acknowledged by women who internalise it. And even as we are living in the 21st century, we are still stuck in history. We may not be wearing the physical corset, but the corset has made its place in our minds.
You see there is a two-fold problem with this whole concept of beauty: one, it demands women to follow a particular model of beauty, and two, it reduces their worth to just appearances. I remember how my 16-year-old self spent hours in front of the mirror wondering if she looked good enough. The idea of slim waists, fair complexion, sharp features, tall height was haunting not just me but also a lot of my friends as well who tried to fit into this idea of beauty.
At an age where we girls should be eating well and providing our bodies with the required nutrition, we starve ourselves to be the ideal beauty as if there is only one way to look and feel like your best possible self. At an age when we girls should have been concerned only about our studies, our greatest fear or anxiety was to look good and desirable before the male gaze. Looking good was equivalent to being desirable and being desirable was equivalent to our self-worth.
Advertising promotes the idea that, as women, we need to look beautiful and we indeed have become slaves to it. We buy cosmetics as we feel the need to hide our imperfections. Kamla Bhasin points out how men don’t feel the need to wear make-up, but women do. And this, I believe, is a concept to ponder over – why is it that most men feel comfortable in their skins while we women are conditioned to look a certain way to be called beautiful?
In her book “The Beauty Myth”, Naomi Wolf argues that “Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West’s controlled, attractive, successful working women, there is a secret “underlife” poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control.” She further quotes that “In 1962, Betty Friedan quoted a young woman trapped in the Feminine Mystique: “Lately, I look in the mirror, and I’m so afraid I’m going to look like my mother.”
And while a lot of women would argue that they wear make-up or go through plastic surgeries to feel good about themselves and not for men, here’s what their statement implies – when a woman goes through plastic surgeries or cosmetic procedures, while she thinks she’s doing it to make her feel good about herself, in reality, it’s the opposite. She is replacing a part of her which she thinks is imperfect or ugly with the ‘perfect or ideal’ idea of beauty – and in the process, a silent message gets conveyed to her subconsciously that ‘I am not beautiful’ – and hence, the need to beautify with make-up or surgeries. This really does more harm to a woman’s self-esteem than the little superficial good it does to her.
And while I am not all against make-up (as it can also be a creative way of expressing one’s own self just as dressing up is), but I certainly am against any means that changes a woman’s appearance to what she is actually not; to be more precise – fairness creams, enhancement surgeries, etc.
A woman will only feel good when she embraces her most authentic self, when she finds perfection and beauty as she looks at the mirror and does not look for artificial treatments to what the society would like to label as ‘ugliness’. Noami Wolf further states in her book that “women’s identity must be premised upon our “beauty” so that we will remain vulnerable to outside approval, carrying the vital sensitive organ of self-esteem exposed to the air.”
Recently, Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor wrote an article (“I didn’t wake up like this”), where she busts the myth around the flawlessness of celebrities. I quote her: “Today, at 31, I like my body because it’s healthy. I’m done celebrating thinness or flawlessness… The ball is in the media’s court to celebrate fit bodies rather than thin ones, and to know the difference. I know now that there’s nothing wrong with stretch marks, cellulite, or scars. They’re markers of our growth. There’s beauty in their realness. I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it: It takes an army, a lot of money, and an incredible amount of time to make a female celebrity look the way she does when you see her. It isn’t realistic, and it isn’t anything to aspire to. Aspire to confidence. Aspire to feeling pretty and carefree and happy, without needing to look any specific way.”
Kalki Koechlin’s Wo-Man-Logue speaks about the female desire to break free from the patriarchal chains of the ‘beauty myth’, as she very beautifully describes how she just wishes to be her authentic self. I quote her: “Sometimes I just want some oversized t-shirts, some boxer shorts, unkempt hair and a uni-brow, you know? I want armpit hair long enough to plait. I want a clean face without a trace of make-up. I wanna look the way I do when I wake up! I want to scratch my hair, dig my nose, lick my fingers, stretch my legs and spread my toes! I want to smile with my gums showing; bare my teeth, contort my pretty little eyes into wrinkles. Yes, I want my wrinkles to look sexy!
I want to be George Clooney basically, but with breasts and a muffin.”
I believe that the corset in our mind is suffocating us to the extent of not being able to question the irrationality of the ‘beauty myth’. This mental corset has restricted our thinking just as the physical corset restricts the real shape of our bodies.
All these flourishing make-up and plastic surgery industries, I believe, are a tricky political weapon to distract women from performing and participating to their optimum capacities in the professional front. As for patriarchy, such a phenomenon of beauty only intends to benefit it from every angle – men would have ‘beautiful’ women around them to please themselves or amuse themselves with the ‘Barbies’ they wish to create out of women, and on the other hand, this insecurity of women occupying the public and professional domains also comes to the front here. Because if all women spend half their time dressing up and beautifying themselves, they will not be able to give their full potential to their work, and hence, the men will be more successful.
However, not every woman wishes to be a pawn in the game; rather, they are players and winners. Delhi University’s girls’ colleges recently barred fairness creams and slimming belts from being their fest sponsors as they wished to promote a healthy body image. We have actresses coming out speaking their minds on the reality of this ‘beauty myth’, which in itself is so ugly.
To all the wonderfully beautiful girls out there, I want to tell you how beautiful you look when you shine with confidence as you embrace your most authentic self and shun this whole concept of ‘beauty’. To the teenagers standing in front of the mirror for hours, I understand your concerns; I was there too. But can I tell you, there is no flaw in you. The flaw is in the society which is insistent on having ‘rigid definitions of beauty’, as Sonam Kapoor calls it.
Let us aspire to be our most authentic self, and not Barbies.