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If we say things like, "My daughter is not beautiful", we are teaching a young girl that she has to measure her worth by her looks alone, and that is wrong!
If we say things like, “My daughter is not beautiful”, we are teaching a young girl that she has to measure her worth by her looks alone, and that is wrong!
A few days back I bumped into an old friend of mine. She introduced me to her daughter who had recently turned three. Her daughter was super fun and quick witted. When I complemented her, my friend said, “But she is not beautiful! I don’t know what will become of her”.
I was aghast. I kept looking at her and just remembered that there was a time when grandmothers and mothers would worry and say, “If you don’t look pretty , you won’t find a suitable match”. But I believed that things have changed since then. To my utter dismay, I was sitting with an educated women, yet she was telling me that her daughter was not beautiful and that was a concern to her.
I could only tell her that the little girl was pretty and smart and that the mother’s concerns were unfounded.
I do believe that one should tend to their appearance and fitness, but I strongly disregard the view that looks are correlated to finding success or happiness in life. Unfortunately, even today some of us tend to worry if our daughters do not seem to meet the standard of desirability and beauty prescribed by our peer group or our immediate society. Sadly this is about the colour of the skin or the external appearance. We worry about their marriage prospects and our acquaintances reinforce our concerns.
The world has evolved and so should the meaning of beauty. Beauty is not about looks of women. Real beauty lies within.
Beauty lies in a women’s strength, in her ethics, in her virtues and in her fortitude.
Beauty lies in overcoming fears.
Beauty lies in seeing hope when none exists.
Beauty lies in being kind when the world appears ugly.
Beauty lies in fighting for what is right.
Beauty lies in perseverance.
Beauty lies in working hard to achieve goals.
Beauty lies in being self-confident.
Beauty lies in being independent and, beauty lies in being humble.
Shouldn’t we stop worrying and ditch the old concept of beauty and tell our daughters that the knight in shining armour, who’s the fancy of every young girl, is a distant reality? Aren’t we ourselves meant to shine and decide the course of our life? The onus of filling our life with joy rests only upon us, and that is the actual determinant of one’s beauty.
I hope that we can denounce the old concept of beauty and how it would determine one’s life, and strongly emphasize that being beautiful is being Confident, Courageous and Self-reliant.
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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