Being or Beautiful

The description of the place where I come from is enough feed for people to guess the way I look and I for one Love IT! No I don't louuuuu the way I look nor do I hate it, I love the fact that people can create a mental picture of me uglier than I already am. My family never let me bother about things like beauty and weight and in fact they provoked me to be uglier ( pun intended). They always encouraged me to be the best I could be and have been beyond supportive in whatever I chose. However being a South Indian in the North Indian space alienates one to a different orbit unintentionally. No the kids weren't mean to me nor did I lose a crush because of my color but certainly there was an unintentional demarcation.

Being around the world ( just USA and Europe, or so I say to impress myself ) enough to understand different people I realized the importance of looking a certain way among my gender. It wasn't particularly disturbing but it's concerning, given its shallowness and lack of importance towards one's personality. I have never understood the art of make-up out of my laziness and my mom's prettiness. Her gorgeousness doesn't need supplement and she just decided mine doesn't either. Recently however I entered the space of make-up and was lost and disinterested. When I asked my friends why they chose to buy them, they replied in all honesty " It makes us confident". That's the second saddest thing I've heard in a long long time given I am from India where the news is filled with my gender serving victims with or without confidence. If confidence were to come from the way you can make yourself look and not from the way you look, it's time to take a second look at many things.

I see animated drawings and paintings on faces which only begin to show the effort they put in. Lashes are replaced by bushes, brows lined using a sketch pen and lips drawn beyond their outlines. Hair is a mystery as they themselves can't trace back what the original color was to begin with. Nails are heavier as they are laded with another. I must take a pause to explain that I don't condemn all of this. I just implore to not draw a relation in which being confident is directly proportional to the way you look.

To this extent I would blame the other gender of holding expectations based on false images, images which are fabricated in every sense, botox, surgeries, make-up, lighting, implants, bleaches, tans etc etc. Man' listing that was tiring! Moving on, when did men start doing all of these too? Third saddest thing I've heard. I look good twice a year precisely when I put an hour effort and a weeks gym to fit into an outfit and mind you all that is FOR ME! No it doesn't make me confident and I was born confident.

I've had some amazing girls around me telling me how beautiful I am in the sense that matters to me. I've had my brother remind me how no one will marry me given my ugliness and then I have my parents who think Aishwarya Rai is yet to watch out for me. Among this spectrum of opinions that matter I chose to be happy the way I look. It works!