Such a fascinating element. Essentially it’s all things good, pure and innocent, yet it possesses the potential to be distorted, manipulated and misused.
To tell you the truth, I used to hate Beauty. I felt that people are too often unjustly measured by it. There is an ideal belief where everyone is Beautiful but to people, somehow, that ideal belief is only meant to be spoken, not to be practised or believed.
I used to hate dressing up because I didn’t want to look ‘beautiful’ for others and give them the opportunity to judge or evaluate me. I enjoyed provoking elders’ comments on my lack of feminineness and my lack of accessories (Indians think that all Indian girls should wear some amount of gold to be considered representable).
Over time, growing up, I learned to appreciate Beauty.
Don’t get me wrong. I have learned to appreciate Beauty in its essential pure form, not in the form the world seemed to be obsessed with.
The belief that everyone is Beautiful, is a truth and a fact. It is not just an utopian idea that is virtually impossible.
What is even more disturbing is how we have learnt to partition beauty.
To many, the term ‘everyone is Beautiful’ can only be applied when one sees inner beauty and not when one is also considering physical beauty. It surprises me how almost everybody is convinced that there are criteria for physical beauty and if you don’t have physical features that meet those criteria then they are not physically beautiful. Then, we go on to justify our shallowness by stating that ‘You are beautiful inside’ (even if you may not possess physical beauty). We seem to be caught in our own world, believing that not everybody is physically beautiful, simply because we are contented with our shallowness and don’t see that the problem is in our vision and perspective and not on the person being viewed or evaluated.
Everyone is beautiful. Truly and sincerely, I believe in that. Everyone is beautiful, inside and out. Everyone looks perfect in their own way. It is up to the eye to recognise that. Everybody’s eyes, nose, lips, face is beautiful beyond words. All we need to do is to learn to see that. Many things are present and exist but we fail to see it because we are clouded by our own delusions and misconceptions.
“The representation of female beauty does not usually focus on the face in which the feelings and thoughts—in a word, the soul—of the woman are so clearly manifested, but focuses instead on other parts of the body, always the same parts. There are no more “Mona Lisa’s” in art, and at this point it seems doubtful that there will be any in the future.” Excerpt from an article from Word Among Us, June 2009
I found the quote above to be so accurate. One’s beauty is clearly reflected in the face, where one’s expression, joy, passion, excitement, compassion is visualised and yet we fail to recognise it. Beauty in the face here does not mean high cheek bones, full lips, big eyes, long eye lashes. Not at all. That is the shallow, restricted idea of Beauty that the world has made us believe in. Beauty in the face is the sincerity, purity, love that is all clearly reflected in the face.
Now, we are obsessed with hot bodies, sexiness and ‘sophisticated/elegant’ face. We want a ‘hot’, ‘attractive’ partner that we can parade to others.
Just try it once (then again, and again and again. :)). See the physical beauty that is in the people around us. It’s there. We just need to learn to see it.
Just yesterday, I was having dinner with some people I know. Acquaintances I shall call them. A women in her 20’s with her partner walked past us and one of my acquaintances passed a comment, stating how her skirt doesn’t match her top. How she would have looked better if she wore a white top instead of black. To be honest, I didn’t see anything wrong with what she wore. She wasn’t even close to a fashion disaster. I was taken aback by the comment and expressed my fear over being judged by some other stranger who may have been evaluating my fashion sense similarly. Her reply to my statement was, “Well, You are what you wear after all”. She was convinced that it is irrefutably true.
Wow! What amazing method of defining characters. I don’t blame her. She was just stating what she was told. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see beyond that.
Somehow, we have come to believe that we now possess the position to judge others, to tell them what a fashion disaster they are, or what would have looked better on them. I don’t know where we get those ridiculous ideas from. Helping your friend choose what looks good on them is somewhat acceptable but evaluating the fashion sense of people we barely know reflects our sense of superiority on others. It is disturbing and frustrating.
Firstly, in my opinion, we don’t possess any right at all to comment on a person’s fashion sense, what more someone we hardly even know.
Secondly, we should ashamed to say that ‘We are what we wear’. How could we have allowed the world to convince us that a person should be judged by what they wear? How could we be stupid and shallow enough to think that a person’s fashion sense defines his/her character.
Unbelievable.
Read any fashion magazine and you will see tons of fashion tips and how to dress ‘right’. If everybody follows those tips, then we would probably all look alike. To come to think of it, look around, 70-80% of us dress alike. Especially those are trend followers. In this case then, wouldn’t we all have the same personality and character since we do dress alike? I mean if ‘we are what we wear’, then we are all the ‘same’?
Tragic, ridiculous, sad, frustrating and completely untrue.
It is time that we become aware of what truly is right and what is ‘portrayed’ to be right. It is time to stop allowing external factors distort the truth.
To tell you the truth, I used to hate Beauty. I felt that people are too often unjustly measured by it. There is an ideal belief where everyone is Beautiful but to people, somehow, that ideal belief is only meant to be spoken, not to be practised or believed.
I used to hate dressing up because I didn’t want to look ‘beautiful’ for others and give them the opportunity to judge or evaluate me. I enjoyed provoking elders’ comments on my lack of feminineness and my lack of accessories (Indians think that all Indian girls should wear some amount of gold to be considered representable).
Over time, growing up, I learned to appreciate Beauty.
Don’t get me wrong. I have learned to appreciate Beauty in its essential pure form, not in the form the world seemed to be obsessed with.
The belief that everyone is Beautiful, is a truth and a fact. It is not just an utopian idea that is virtually impossible.
What is even more disturbing is how we have learnt to partition beauty.
To many, the term ‘everyone is Beautiful’ can only be applied when one sees inner beauty and not when one is also considering physical beauty. It surprises me how almost everybody is convinced that there are criteria for physical beauty and if you don’t have physical features that meet those criteria then they are not physically beautiful. Then, we go on to justify our shallowness by stating that ‘You are beautiful inside’ (even if you may not possess physical beauty). We seem to be caught in our own world, believing that not everybody is physically beautiful, simply because we are contented with our shallowness and don’t see that the problem is in our vision and perspective and not on the person being viewed or evaluated.
Everyone is beautiful. Truly and sincerely, I believe in that. Everyone is beautiful, inside and out. Everyone looks perfect in their own way. It is up to the eye to recognise that. Everybody’s eyes, nose, lips, face is beautiful beyond words. All we need to do is to learn to see that. Many things are present and exist but we fail to see it because we are clouded by our own delusions and misconceptions.
“The representation of female beauty does not usually focus on the face in which the feelings and thoughts—in a word, the soul—of the woman are so clearly manifested, but focuses instead on other parts of the body, always the same parts. There are no more “Mona Lisa’s” in art, and at this point it seems doubtful that there will be any in the future.” Excerpt from an article from Word Among Us, June 2009
I found the quote above to be so accurate. One’s beauty is clearly reflected in the face, where one’s expression, joy, passion, excitement, compassion is visualised and yet we fail to recognise it. Beauty in the face here does not mean high cheek bones, full lips, big eyes, long eye lashes. Not at all. That is the shallow, restricted idea of Beauty that the world has made us believe in. Beauty in the face is the sincerity, purity, love that is all clearly reflected in the face.
Now, we are obsessed with hot bodies, sexiness and ‘sophisticated/elegant’ face. We want a ‘hot’, ‘attractive’ partner that we can parade to others.
Just try it once (then again, and again and again. :)). See the physical beauty that is in the people around us. It’s there. We just need to learn to see it.
Just yesterday, I was having dinner with some people I know. Acquaintances I shall call them. A women in her 20’s with her partner walked past us and one of my acquaintances passed a comment, stating how her skirt doesn’t match her top. How she would have looked better if she wore a white top instead of black. To be honest, I didn’t see anything wrong with what she wore. She wasn’t even close to a fashion disaster. I was taken aback by the comment and expressed my fear over being judged by some other stranger who may have been evaluating my fashion sense similarly. Her reply to my statement was, “Well, You are what you wear after all”. She was convinced that it is irrefutably true.
Wow! What amazing method of defining characters. I don’t blame her. She was just stating what she was told. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see beyond that.
Somehow, we have come to believe that we now possess the position to judge others, to tell them what a fashion disaster they are, or what would have looked better on them. I don’t know where we get those ridiculous ideas from. Helping your friend choose what looks good on them is somewhat acceptable but evaluating the fashion sense of people we barely know reflects our sense of superiority on others. It is disturbing and frustrating.
Firstly, in my opinion, we don’t possess any right at all to comment on a person’s fashion sense, what more someone we hardly even know.
Secondly, we should ashamed to say that ‘We are what we wear’. How could we have allowed the world to convince us that a person should be judged by what they wear? How could we be stupid and shallow enough to think that a person’s fashion sense defines his/her character.
Unbelievable.
Read any fashion magazine and you will see tons of fashion tips and how to dress ‘right’. If everybody follows those tips, then we would probably all look alike. To come to think of it, look around, 70-80% of us dress alike. Especially those are trend followers. In this case then, wouldn’t we all have the same personality and character since we do dress alike? I mean if ‘we are what we wear’, then we are all the ‘same’?
Tragic, ridiculous, sad, frustrating and completely untrue.
It is time that we become aware of what truly is right and what is ‘portrayed’ to be right. It is time to stop allowing external factors distort the truth.
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