Kajal aur Kupsurat

A few days ago, when I posted something, one of my friend asked me,
"anu, why do you always write about the negativity in the world?"

So here we go. I’m writing about the most magnificent, divine, and alluring part of the world, something that can never be robbed from anyone - a woman's beauty.

Before we delve into that, I would like to quote Jo March:

"Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for."

Growing up, as I developed my consciousness and started understanding the world, I realised that we girls put so much of our energy into worrying about how we look, how we are perceived externally, and how we present ourselves to society.

They say beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, and colours in any form that can be seen .But isn't beauty about how colourful my soul is ?Isn't it about how I treat people with love and empathy? Isn't it about how I treat myself and everyone around me with kindness? Isn't it about how deeply I love and yearn for everything?

People often define or rationalise their love based on their definition of beauty. They will love you only if you're socially accepted as a "pretty" person.
That’s exactly why I’ve always believed that if a blind person could love you, it would be for you  your real beauty  the kind that can be felt. For your scars and stretch marks that could be traced on skin, for your voice and your laugh that could be heard.

Young girls, begin to define their love for themselves based on how they are loved by the outside world.
But girls, isn’t love something you deserve from yourself before you ever depend on someone else to give it to you?

Body image is a concept that may not have been defined historically, but the desire to improve one’s appearance has existed throughout time. This can be seen in how cosmetics have been used for thousands of years across the world.

However, the active preoccupation with flaws in one’s appearance is a more recent phenomenon  and one that can be emotionally, and even physically, damaging.
Women’s self-esteem can be affected by poor body image. They can suffer from health problems caused by eating disorders or the use of dangerous chemicals marketed as beauty fixes.
Certain groups of women, like those who are physically disabled or visibly different from others, may be especially affected. Even women without poor body image can be negatively impacted by society’s judgment of their appearance  from emotionally stressful family pressure to financially stressful reduced job prospects.

Additionally, social media and the market fuel themselves by trying to make you prettier, skinnier, fairer , basically anything other than what you already are.
They feed off your insecurities, which were foundationally curated by society, just to sell you things to make you "prettier".

i kept thinking it was me.
but what if the mirror was lying?

What is actually the problem here?

Commercialization of Beauty.

  

Our economy  survives by selling us shame. It creates the insecurity and then sells you the fix. First your skin is "too dark", so they sell you fairness creams. Then your body is "too big", so they sell you diet pills, detox teas, and filters. The goal was never to help you. It was always to keep you buying.

Our entire lives, women are not supposed to know if we are pretty. We are supposed to wait for someone else to tell us.
We are supposed to wait for validation before we are allowed to feel it ourselves.

But isn’t that foolish?
We are all so beautiful, in our own ways.

The irony is, even though I preach all of this, tomorrow I will probably go back to using kajal just to feel “prettier”.
I will go back to adding things to my cart on Nykaa, maybe because it is so deeply embedded in me  the idea that I have to look good to feel good.  And I exist with the agony of knowing that I cannot completely get rid of this feeling, no matter how much I unlearn.

Reference-

- https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2143&context=isp_collection

- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Okewa-Owoeye/publication/384197497_EFFECTS_OF_MARKETING_COMMUNICATION_ON_NEW_PRODUCTS_COMMERCIALISATION_AMONG_START-UPS_IN_THE_BEAUTYCOSMETICS_INDUSTRY/links/66ee02df6b101f6fa4f88681/EFFECTS-OF-MARKETING-COMMUNICATION-ON-NEW-PRODUCTS-COMMERCIALISATION-AMONG-START-UPS-IN-THE-BEAUTY-COSMETICS-INDUSTRY.pdf

- https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fea2.12076