Skip to main content

Do all We Care is about How We Look?

Looking good is important, no one will deny that, especially in today's appearance-crazy times. But does it override everything?

Price of unconventional looks

If one doesn't conform to regular beauty standards (especially women), what is the outcome? When one is overweight, or has rough skin, or has alopecia or excessive facial hair? 

Does one go into hiding? Or does one desperately try every cosmetic procedure there is to "fit in "? Or does one develop an excessively thick skin, pretending to be unaffected by jeers or taunts? 

Class 10 topper from UP, India- Prachi Nigam has amply proven her academic merit, as well as her nerves of steel. When she topped the board examination, she had expected some brickbats (how can you be okay looking like that?).

In any case, living in a country like ours, she must have had more than her fair share of taunts and jeers throughout her growing years.

Blatant Body Shaming

Yet the unprecedented, abusive body shaming is obviously getting to her. People are seeing her facial hair, not her brilliant brains! 

In an interview she says resignedly, perhaps it would have been better if she hadn't topped!  Then people wouldn't have noticed her face so much.

So this is what we have come to? Annihilation of intellectual, or any other achievement, for failure to look pretty?? Shame on us!!

Don't give up! Ever!

Prachi though, is made of sterner stuff. She says she doesn't care about the trolls much, as shes used to it. Her intellect will see her through, she believes. 

More power to her. 

Now only if we can train our sorry selves to look beyond the exterior....


#bodyshaming
#looksovermerit
#trolling
#toppers

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Does Mother Mary Really Come? You bet!

Prolific writer-activist-thinker Arundhati Roy's memoir, an ode to her mother's formidable personality, is cleverly titled, Mother Mary Comes to Me. Below the title is a picture of young Roy nonchalantly smoking a bidi. Irreverence, thy name is Arundhati Roy! At 372 pages, it is a tome, a sweeping saga that recollects both her mother's remarkable life, as well as her own. Is it a Memoir? Yes and no. Though the book title refers to their mother-daughter relationship, the book - at several junctures treats each one of them as independent and exclusive from one another. In fact, for a good part, her mother finds no mention at all, and the reader is engrossed reading about Roy's exploits and struggles through Architecture College, early attempts to find her vocation and calling, her dabbling with cinema, acting, scriptwriting; her romantic liaisons with the luscious JC, Sanjay, Pradeep et al. A life as extraordinary and unapologetic as Arundhati's mesmerizes in itself. ...

The Sadness Within Us

A curious phenomenon has taken place over the years. Technology has advanced in leaps, modern medicine has become far more effective, we can control pain and disease far better, mental health is getting due attention, there are more avenues for creativity and entertainment.  Yet.... We are no longer able to be really happy. We are a chronically unhappy people. Forever dissatisfied, never content. Always thinking about the past or the future, never enjoying the moment. Think about it. When was the last time you were really, truly, wholly happy? Blissful, joyful? You slog hard at office, get that deserved raise/promotion, party hard to celebrate, and yet at the end of the day, a hollowness creeps in. An emptiness, a feeling of futility. You have a grand wedding - its the stuff Instagram dreams are made of. Your sweetheart looks like a million bucks with the latest designer lehenga, you yourself are spruced up, your family and friends are beaming, the event is going on swimmingly. Yet...

Emotional toil of festival times

Festivals are happy times, right? Time for merriment, revelry, celebration, enjoying yourself... Wrong! Studies show festivals call for a steady spike in stress levels. Cortisol shoots up, starting with preparation for festivals, and remains high throughout, in the quest to do everything perfectly, "at least during the festival". Guess who bears the brunt of this? Yes, its the one who takes emotional labour for everyone she cares for - the woman of the house. She wants everything to be perfect, so works her ass off tidying and cleaning things. Then she wants her family to be fed well, so spends hours toiling away making delicacies in the kitchen. Rangoli to be painted - there she is with the brush. Festoons to be hung up - she's balancing herself on a stool. Furniture rearranged, flowers put up, puja room decorated? Yes, only one person who signs up for all this. Then there's the stress of the whole family at home, stepping on each other's toes. She has to appease...