Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
The inertia of overcoming a long spell of inactivity on my blog seems to have become a norm. I often find myself reminiscing about the days when words would flow seamlessly and the ‘publish’ option would be clicked ever so frequently. However, my recent inactivity stems from my decision of wanting to write and share my thoughts about topics that are more than just fun to read. This is quite a hard choice for me because I’m an opinionated person who’s also very wary of sharing her opinions publicly. As you may have figured, this leaves me stuck between a rock and a hard place, and with an abandoned blog post. However, ever so often, a few incidents wake me up from my slumber and make me brood about them enough to egg the blogger in me from hibernation.
One such moment of awakening occurred a couple of days ago when I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and came across the now viral video of Ariyonna crying because she felt she looked ugly. This incident is ironic at two levels — 1. An article on social media deeply impacted someone like me who’s a sworn disbeliever of social media’s culture and workings, and 2. I saw this video just two days after International Women’s Day. At a time when women all over the world were seemingly being celebrated, a four-year old was forced to question her outward appearance because of the often unrealistic and unfair, pun intended, norms of beauty that our society forces on us. While there is a conscious effort by beauty and fashion brands to undo the beauty stereotypes that they were instrumental in establishing, these efforts are clearly not impactful enough for a four-year old’s impressionable mind. It also behooves us to question the beauty norms that we are consciously and subconsciously propagating. These, clearly, have been very successful in permeating the minds of those most susceptible to them. It pains me to imagine how many more young girls and boys suffer from low self-esteem and allow that to limit their otherwise limitless gamut of choices.
It is hard to tell which is more damaging and baseless — sexism or racism. However, put the two together and you have a killer combination. Sometimes, quite literally. While I’m not understating the pressures that come with conforming to societal constructs of any kind, I’d like to use this space to share my thoughts on the beauty norms that are often thrust upon girls of color. I grew up in a country which is obsessed with light skin, and continues to remain so. This fetish can be traced back to the many colonizers and invaders who forced their way into India over centuries. Even though the government is busy changing names of roads and railway stations, nomenclature is probably not the most problematic remnant of years of invasion and colonization. If this social concoction were not toxic enough, add to it the potent, and very indigenous, ingredient of the caste system and you would have touched the tip of the iceberg of India’s obsession with fair skin. This might seem like a non-issue to many, but the repercussions of growing up in a social environment which considers one unattractive takes a serious toll on their self-esteem and affects their personality in often irreparable ways. While there’s no doubt that it’s a setback for the individual, it’s also worth noting that the community at large suffers from the loss of untapped potential.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us claim to be above these rigid notions of beauty. However, every time one of us aspires for fairer skin, straighter hair or any one of the other hundred beauty conventions, we give in to pressure and make it even harder for those around us. In a world where the range of skin colors resemble a box of assorted chocolates, why do we want our mirrors to tell us otherwise? Women are often held to higher, and often unfair, standards as compared to their male counterparts. Let’s not further tangle this knot by adding and propagating more baseless rubrics.
To look into a mirror and feel confident is simple joy that we all deserve. Holding ourselves, and those around us, to any pre-established and unreasonable standards of beauty diminishes this joy. We must aspire to make those around us not merely comfortable, but truly happy in their skin, with their disheveled or straight hair, in their tiny and large frames. To all the Ariyonnas in the world, let no one tell you otherwise.
