Mirror, Mirror On The Wall...

Image Courtesy: Denny Muller, Unsplash.com

We live in a world where perfection is determined by a number on the skin-tone scale, size on a label or the number of inches in jeans. There are web-wide movements, campaigns encouraging body and appearance positivity through celebrating all color, shapes, sizes and forms making one question our society’s need for them in the first place. It is astonishing that people must be told to have confidence in their appearance.

It is the Perfection Effect, that has tarnished the way people view not only others but themselves. The Perfection Effect compels people to constantly push themselves towards society’s ideal view of flawless & fair complexion or a 24 inch waist. Shouldn't we be proud of the body and skin tone they we given instead of wishing for an ideal image of beauty? According to Dr. Brownell, “Highly unrealistic beauty ideals…lead to conflict within bodies.” This effort to reach perfection can go into overdrive and result in fatal outcomes for some.

Recently, the Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar told agitating nurses in Goa not to hold their protest demonstrations in the hot sun as it would make them “dark” and “ruin their marital prospects”. We have a psychological, nay pathological, craving for fairness.

Where did fair complexion as a benchmark of beauty come from?

“We were introduced to the politics of color very early in our lives, in the most surprising of places; in children’s comic books”, says Devdutt Pattanaik, Author. But I wanted to dig deeper into history in an attempt to get as close to the source of colourism in society as I was not entirely convinced with solely blaming our colonial past for our obsession with fairness.

In Ancient India, even with the existence of the difference in the skin color of people, the idea of colourism did not exist and in fact, excerpts from scriptures and texts reveal the celebration of all skin color.

Then came various settlers, rulers, invaders and colonizers who entered India starting in the 1400s. They were all relatively light-skinned. The general opinion is that obsession with fair skin became a part of the Indian psyche with the British Empire that formally engrained the skin tone prejudice. There is no evidence but conjecture that colonizers kept light skinned Indians as allies over the rest of the “blacks”. They even named their settlement at Fort St. George “White Town” and the Indian settlement “Black Town”.

The British colonizers were able to build on India’s existing caste system, a socioeconomic hierarchy with origins in Hinduism. The upper caste Brahmins and Kshatriyas were not only traditionally powerful but also light-skinned, while lower castes, including the Dalits, performed manual tasks and had darker complexions. Since caste and class often intersect, fair skin was perceived as being evidence of “better financial and social status of a person.”

Although European colonialism has undoubtedly left its mark worldwide, colourism is said to predate contact with Europeans in Asian countries. There, the idea that white skin is superior to dark skin may derive from ruling classes typically having lighter complexions than the ruled class. Hence, dark skin has come to be associated with lower classes and light skin with the elite.

Today, the premium on light skin in India is likely tangled up with its history, along with cultural influences of the Western world. So it will be safe to assume that India’s attitude towards skin color is a complex mix of caste, colonial legacy and socioeconomic aspects that have not gone away for centuries.

It’s no wonder that Indians are obsessed with doing anything and everything to lighten their complexion to increase their attractiveness and status. Grandmothers dole out advice to the ladies of the house to drink half a cup of fresh, unboiled cow milk first thing every morning to give birth to a fair child. Fathers appear extra-burdened with a dark complexioned girl because her chances of a good husband are vastly reduced. Relatives constantly pass judgement on a dark-skinned daughter-in-law and a few “well meaning” ones share a prescription of gram flour, milk and turmeric paste for the face as a remedy for lighter complexion. For the rest of the poor souls, big brands have taken advantage of this need and created a multi million dollar industry around “fair & lovely”.

How do we change our mindset towards unfair fairness standards of beauty?

As they say “beauty lies in the eyes of beholder.” But then our eyes have been trained to look for beauty stereotypes and everyday we are bombarded with so many images dictating ideal beauty standards with the West and Bollywood laying down the benchmark for what is beautiful and what is ugly. But the adage itself reflects the enriched human culture, nature and perceptions of beauty.

Let’s first understand beauty, which is a mental construct not a scientific phenomenon.

Is beauty defined by the symmetry of your face, is it your age, color, race, bone structure, gender or body shape? Various cultures have different definitions and perceptions of beauty. From the Kayan tribes who believe that long giraffe type necks are the ultimate sign of beauty and from age five, start priming their necks with heavy brass rings, to several parts of Asia where pale or white skin is often seen as a sign of beauty and affluence.

Or maybe beauty is down to the aesthetic artists, facialists and makeup artists who can transform faces or bring about a bloom of youth?

Segun Garuba-Okelarin, Beauty, Skincare and Well-being Writer, metaphorically explains beauty using mirrors of society.

“Have you ever come out of a steamy hot shower and looked at your reflection in the mirror when it’s completely fogged up?

I often think that is how we tend to view our beauty through fogged up mirrors. We are seeing ourselves but the picture isn’t exactly clear and we have limited visibility. The mirrors have been fogged up through different life experiences and memories as we have grown up, and now blend together to form our own definition of our beauty.

The first mirror is formed as a young child and is often based on what was said about us from our parents and those around us. I remember being told that I was a cute child, so that when I got a little older and was around six or seven another child pointed out how my complexion and appearance made me stand-out from the rest of the girls in my class photo. It was the first time I was complimented on my looks and it filled me with pride and joy.

But it was short-lived. The second mirror is adolescence when we are thrust into a big wide world and out of the cocoon’s of our home. I received regular comments from people around me about my weight, acne and complexion. I began to see myself as ugly. A sharp contrast of how I felt just a few years ago. I had nothing to rise up against the observations made by people and I silently accepted it.

As a teenager, my appearance woes didn’t disappear and I made all attempts to be as inconspicuous as I could. The awkwardness translated into dressing up as shabbily as possible. The logic I applied was, “If I am not good to look at then what’s the point of quality clothing?” I don’t think there has ever been a time where I was more acutely aware (read conscious) of my plain looks/appearance. But it did open up the door for me to question how I looked and to fix my "flaws". After numerous attempts to achieve a clear skin, I simply embraced it and focused more on my overall turn-out. It paved way for creating my own style and the confidence to carry anything with aplomb. Be it a pixie-cut hairdo or fashionable shoes, I decided to let the gaze of onlookers be drawn to my footwear or hair-style rather than my face. It worked!

The final mirror comes from socially constructed ideas of beauty. We are often bombarded with images in the media, popular culture, society and peers, which can create a false idea of beauty in our eyes. We tend to compare ourselves to those ideals and use it as some sort of margin of measurement.

Even though I am not a big fan of her movies, I am impressed with Sonam Kapoor's piece on unrealistic beauty standards and this is what she says:

“So, for every girl leaning into her bedroom mirror, wondering why she doesn’t look like a celebrity, please know that nobody wakes up like this. Not me. Not any other actress (not even Beyonce, I swear).

Here’s the real deal: Before each public appearance, I spend 90 minutes in a makeup chair. Three to six people work on my hair and makeup, while a professional touches up my nails. My eyebrows are tweezed and threaded every week. There’s concealer on parts of my body that I could never have predicted would need concealing. I’m up at 6 A.M. every day and at the gym by 7:30. I exercise for 90 minutes and, some evening, again before bed. It’s someone’s full-time job to decide what I can and cannot eat. There are more ingredients in my face packs than in my food. There’s a team dedicated to finding me flattering outfits. After all that, if I am still not “flawless” enough, there are generous servings of Photoshop. I’ve said it before, and I will keep saying it; it takes and army, a lot of money, and an incredible amount of time to make a female celebrity look the way she does when you see her. It isn’t realistic, and it isn’t anything to aspire to. Aspire to confidence. Aspire to feeling pretty and carefree and happy, without needing to look any specific way.

And the next time you see a young girl gazing wistfully at a blemish-free, shiny-haired model in a magazine, bust the myth of flawlessness for her. Tell her how beautiful she is. Praise her smile or her laugh or her mind or her gait. Don’t let her grow up believing that she’s flawed, or that there’s anything she’s lacking for looking different from a woman on a billboard. Don’t let her hold herself to a standard that’s unreal, even for the women on the billboards.”

The great shame is how beauty is talked about only in terms of the physical - that which meets the eye. But I think when most of us “feel” most beautiful, is when we are confident, happy and when we are doing something that is authentic, something that doesn’t necessarily have to do with appearance. At the end of the day, it’s not anyone else’s responsibility to make you feel beautiful, it’s yours. And despite all the social constructions, marketing and magazines, I think beauty comes down to believing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; that you - all of you - is much greater than any imperfections that you may have. And that is something that we can all work on.

I believe the real beauty is acceptance of yourself, perceived flaws and all and to realize that they are a part of what makes you, you. Its a radiance of spirit, having character, kindness to ourselves and to others, its strength and self-confidence to know that with or without makeup the real beauty is you.

If you look at a flower or a sunset, you don’t judge it, you simply accept and appreciate it for what it is. So maybe it’s time to create a fourth mirror, a new mirror that is wiped clean and is minus the fog of comparisons, judgements, expectations and unrealistic standards.

Take a look, a real hard look and embrace and accept you as you.