Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Truly Divine Beauty

Beauty exist in all things. Beauty is universal. Beauty is divine. Iam sure many of you agree with this point. Yet what makes me wonder is the fact that how many of us have actually understood the real meaning of beauty.(Iam as ignorant as many of you, and iam yet to understand beauty in its real meaning).Yet what inspired me to think on this topic, is a recent conversation with a friend of mine(Deepak) about a particular ad. The ad can be found at the below link:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lJhSogkI284&feature=related


According to him, its an advertisement thats currently doing the rounds on TV channels. It apparently is the untold saga of a brown girl who looses her man to a "pale-white" woman. Yet. there's hope for the brown girl. She can "up" it up by opting to turn pinkish white instead of pale white..and beat her rival to it! She needs to use the magic cream for two weeks, [and continue using it of course, to retain her man].

The content of the ad again turns towards disparaging our identities as brown people and also reinforcing the same thing people have been fighting for for ages- associations to caste/nationality/race to appearances and cultural ideas of beauty and the ugly side effects of conflict these create within women of South Asian origin. My friend found it totally unacceptable and has been trying to spread awareness regarding how these kind of Advertisements should be handled ,as they claim to be "representative of what perceptions of beauty are and should be", which are very much biased and quite untrue.

There is a saying:
"Beauty is only skin deep".

Though everyone knows this, there are only few who really can comprehend what it means. Agreed that, appearances play a major role in first impression, and that "Skin Beauty" is what is perceived by anyone initially,yet what many fail to understand is that over a period of time, its the real beauty which surfaces.

Lets take an instance, a girl who is truly beautiful in nature, feels that she is not fair enough because of the color of the skin, . If she allows herself to be drowned by the idea of what the world thinks of "what is beautiful and what is not", eventually, she begans to loose confidence in herself. She begans to think herself as dark skinned girl who needs some magical cream to become fair again and to be accepted by the world as a fair lady.


This couldnt be any farther away from the truth... What is happening here,is that when the girl has given permission to others to dictate her beauty, she has to live and maintain her beauty in the eyes of others, which is highly superficial. It means if people tell you are beautiful, you are one. If they tell you, you are not beautiful, you are not. This not only leaves you living a falsified life, your own image of yourself- the true beauty takes a beating and lives in recluse.

A simple proof of one's own beauty can be taken from the fact that "For every mother, her children are the most beautiful people on this earth".No one can fence against that.Look at any child, irrespective of whether it is in India, US, Africa, it has and exhibits the same divine beauty.,. To quote a saying:
Every Child is God's own image


But as we grow up, our outlook begans to change, thanks to a large extent, the role played by movies and media advertisements,where they show guys running after showy girls.,. Thats it. It gets programmed in our mind. Apart from the movies and ads, we are equally to be blamed as we are the one who demand it and who began to believe in it and what more we began to propagate the belief.

What we missed out is the fact that, by beautiful, it meant the character not the skin beauty. This self programming and unconscious self- reinforcement happens to such a major extent that as time passes, the superficial outlook gets more prominence than the real beauty and as we grow, we forget our beautiful side, and began to tell ourself that "we are not beautiful". Hence, we cruelly unknowingly allow our own true beauty to drift away.

All said and done, what do we do ... Well, Iam not a preacher, not a philosopher, nor an edified person. Yet from many of the conversations i was fortunate to have with enlightened souls, i know one thing for sure. Accepting our true nature is the first step anyone can take towards realizing his/her true inner beauty.

Once we began to respect us for what we are , it follows automatically that the perceived image of you to others will get enhanced as you have told yourself that you are a radiant of beauty. This in turn slowly evolves to seeing beauty around us. The more beauty we can see, the more we evolve, so this process continues wherein not only we realize our true beauty we also help others realize their true beauty.


To quote Nelson Rockefeller,

“You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure about you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.”

P.S: I dont mean to undermine the beauty of fair looking girls. In fact, truly beautiful people in the world are the ones who realize their own beauty as well as recognize the beauty of others.

13 comments:

«AM» said...

I would say beauty can be split into two.. beauty of the inner mind and beauty on the outside. Many of those who look to beautify themselves on the outside, neglect their inner self completely.. which is why finding persons with the highest of both qualities, is, rare. I always prefer the latter quality to be superior.

Prashant Sree said...

@ Charlie: Very true. As they say "When you focus much on the outside, you cant help but mix up a bit of inside".

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. :)

Deepak Srinivasan said...

Hey Prashant,
thats a nice holistic view of beauty that you describe and its indeed true. Beauty is a certain inner divinity but sadly in many cases is assumed to be some physical attributes like high noses, cheek bones and skin colour...most of which were propogated by the white man culture...european colonisation and plunder or pagan cultures and nations...
I dont think that this notion of whiteness/fairness existed all through humankind...there are certain socio-behavioural reasons that actually go behind why this area is the way it is...
like for example, lighter skin in mediveal europe meant that one belonged to the aristrocratic society mainly because the peasants would be in the sun all day and be tanned. so it was a primitive class identification factor that some societies still follow. it may have nothing to do with beauty at all. (note here that this was within a caucasian system where genetically, all would be born with light skin, but it was the environmental effect on them that led to categorisation thus).
Another factor behind this is POWER. Its very simple again...an archetype of a burly white man who colonised many lands, bringing with him guns and creating terror, and power...he also began intellectually dividing the peoples by favoring some who helped him or looked like him...
so in the Indian subcontinent, a lot of why we DESIRE whiteness/fairness can also be because of this...a certain political/social lift-up that one seemed to get then because of appearance.
So, the reason i started up this whole argument on whiteness is so we become aware that it isnt at all about beauty. its about a lot of unconscious factors that have led to us being obsessed with this factor...
and that goes to show how primitive the advertisement is...

Deepak Srinivasan said...

i meant plunder of* pagan cultures in my post
:)

Prashant Sree said...

@Deepak: Gr8 observation Deepak.

I really appreciate it, both your observation as well as the reasons you have quoted for the same which has lead to the disparity among people due to skin color and the unrest henceforth.

Anonymous said...

It's all about the battle between the inner glow and the outer show. Who outnumbers whom depends on the individuals perspective. But what I have always felt is that, both the glow and show are essential. Without the show the glow isn't recognized. And without the glow, the show or skin beauty wears off. When people see you it isn't the inner beauty that is first noticed, but the outside. That forms the first impression. But if you don't have the expected good character, then the outside beauty ain't of much use, as it's power wears off. So, both the inner and outer beauty are essential, if one doesn't like to be pushed into oblivion.

Prashant Sree said...

@jithin: Thanks for your thoughts. Iam assume what you had meant was there has to be a balance between the inner and the outer glow. And as you said, there has to be a harmony between the two. Is case of outer glow, other than the skin glow, i believe its more of the confidence which you exhibit, the aura which you have, because of your own high self esteem, which gives you an Attracting Persona.

Anonymous said...

wtf!
we ALL know that priyanka chopra is much fairer than that!!!!
these ads work on unknown or less popular models. But priyanka is very popular and its a fact that shes fair and they had to make her dark for this stupid ad!
whats more intruging is that early they wanted to make dark people fair ...now its fair people to pinky fair or whatever crap!
unilever guys....get a life and earn money by doing good things!!!!

Prashant Sree said...

@ anon: Hey dude, i do see the reason for u getting pissed off.,. Well for one thing, even if the girl they had in the ad was someone other than Priyanka Chopra, such ad undermines one's basic identity.,. And no one has the right to put down someone on the basis of color,caste, creed or religion.,. Yet our little innocuous mind gets influenced by such things...

Do i see a change in people's mindset and their awareness ?

Priya said...

special kudos for this line-Accepting our true nature is the first step anyone can take towards realizing his/her true inner beauty.
your blog is very impact making! how true..these ads in trying to coax ppl into buying their products imprint false views onto ppl.. some jewellery ads r even worse wherein a boy falls for a gal for all the lovely goldie jewels she has on..

@deepak ur comment wudve made another good blog..

Prashant Sree said...

@priyadarshini: Thanks Dear... :)
What you say is true, Only if the girls can understand the big picture, we would see an immense shift in the way ads are made and shown ;)

And thanks for the appreciation. :)

Prashant Sree said...

@ deepak --> Your comments are as insightful and as long as a blog article... ;) Just kidding !! Gr8 views buddy !!

Unknown said...

Beauty is spiritual.The word beauty refers to harmony between internal(character, attitude etc) and external(Accepting your own true identity). Being spiritual means uniting mind , body and soul. The phrase beauty is spiritual makes me to think ability to convey/express ideas with harmony in a much meaningful way.