Be-you-ty

What does real beauty mean to me?Now,I know I am going to get carried away with this.
The dusty volume of Little Oxford Dictionary that is perched on my bedside table defines beauty using four independent phrases-
1.the quality of being very pleasing to the senses
2.a beautiful woman
3.an excellent example of something
and lastly,-4.an attractive feature or advantage.
But is beauty really that objective to you?Can it be measured by the number of tick marks placed on little square boxes in a questionnaire?
Perhaps,it can.But it is not quite so for me.
Being,as I am,a teenage girl;dealing with concerns over one's own physical image is not alien to me.In fact,everyday the fashion industry doles out fresh guidelines on how to capture beauty and use it as your slave,to act as per your command.One day,they declare that being full bodied and well-fed is 'in' and is pretty,the next-they are calling it fat and ugly.Another day,wearing your hair a particular way is divine but only hours later they will deem it a 'fashion disaster'.But what they fail to understand is that,beauty is not their captive prisoner and beauty cannot be withheld.
And they are fickle in their haughty ignorance.

1.If beauty is the quality of being very pleasing to the senses then isn't love,when all your senses are famed to elope,considered by most to be the most beautiful thing in existence on Earth a contradiction?
2.A beautiful woman.
Like a 'real' man cannot be considered beautiful.He can only be handsome and dashing.
A beautiful woman in my country is firstly,anybody whose skin complexion is on the fairer side.If you're not fair you don't even deserve to enter the competition,you don't qualify.
How can a person's skin colour correspond to their beauty?Can't dusky complexioned people be beautiful too?What about Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell?No,not in my country where fairness products are still one of the hottest selling items in the market.
Fairness is a prerogative for beauty here.
3.An excellent example of something must also be the perfect example for the thing.But isn't perfection overrated?In our quest for perfection don't we often forget the series of little imperfections that we manipulate in order to achieve what is perfection?Aren't the imperfections more appealing altogether with their natural flaws and shortcomings?
4.Lastly,beauty is defined to be an attractive feature or advantage.And surely,the linguist who compiled this miniature dome of abhorrence that strives to analyse to analyse and account for the meaning of every single thing in existence hadn't heard of sacrifices.Yes,sacrifices the non-dictionary referring to opposite of an advantage,because when you are sacrificial you're more often than not at a disadvantage.

Sacrifices,that are sometimes necessary and always crucial in influencing and revealing the dynamics of a person's character i.e. his or her inner beauty.Also,if all of us were attracted to the same things,then what fun would that be?
I think what I am trying to say is that real beauty cannot be defined.It cannot be contained within the constraints of a few words.It is not a helpless victim to time,it is ageless.Wrinkles cannot make it fade or a few extra kilos here and there.And it does not have a colour,a height,a hairstyle.Real beauty is everywhere.It is all in the mind and whether you choose to see it.So good luck finding it!


Note-None of these pictures are mine,of course.