Of Appearances and Stereotypes

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”  - John Keats

These immortal lines by Keats all but sum up our overwhelming fascination for everything that is beautiful. Although the great poet compares the eternal beauty of an object of art with the transient beauty of mortals, it is amazing how literally we have taken his thoughts.

It is definitely neither my intention, nor do I possess either the authority or audacity to comment on the words penned by one of the greatest poets English Literature has ever known. But these particular lines have always sparked several questions in my mind – questions that I always suppressed – out of loyalty to my love for the poet and awe for the great teachers of literature who were so passionate about their subject that to contradict a verse so lovely almost sounded like blasphemy.

But questions like these can never be contained for too long – as they torment the mind and force it to ponder deeper, to delve into the hidden recesses of our conscious and sub conscious experiences and arrive at a conclusion that is your own – that you can believe in and live by.

Why are we comforted by Keats’ simple logic? Is the answer to that question somehow connected with the fact that in all our beloved fairy tales – across cultures and geographies – the protagonists are always beautiful and the wicked witch is evil and ugly? So does that mean that beauty symbolizes truth and all that is true is beautiful too?

Is that why the world is kinder to people blessed with external beauty, quick to assume that beauty encompasses calibre, intellect and even character? These are the first impressions I am alluding to – but often times the first impression is the only one, if not the most important one.

There is no denying it then. We live in a world that is swayed by good looks – where we base our judgment of people by the colour of their skin, by how tall they are, how beautiful they look and uphold the age old assumption that character and intellect necessarily reside in a beautiful body.The media too plays its role by constantly bombarding us with pretty images that fuel our desire to compare and compete. The old want to look younger, the young want to look prettier (in the case of us Indians – fairer too) so much so that even childhood seems to have fallen prey to the obsession with beauty.

And here's what's most unfortunate - the greatest irony to have shackled our minds and enslaved our thoughts. Despite belonging to a civilisation that dates back more than 5000 years, from where has sprouted one of the finest philosphies considered to be the fountainhead of ageless wisdom for all humankind, we seem to have plummeted to being one of the most racist cultures on the planet.

Our ancient philosophy tells us that the body is a mere covering for the soul – a vehicle in its journey towards salvation. Yet we delude ourselves into believing the body to be paramount and it is this mistake that distances us from our souls, from realizing the core of our being, from knowing who we really are.

 Although I cannot change attitudes, I needed to make peace with my questions, needed to settle the confusion raging within me, accumulated over decades, which has finally manifested in the form of this outpouring.

This brings me back to the lines by Keats. What he really meant was eternal truth – the divine truth – it was this truth that he equated with beauty. And the body can never represent that eternal truth. It’s the soul, the divinity in us that is beautiful. All we need to do is look beyond the confining parameters of physical beauty and stay connected to our real selves.

The peace has finally been made – not only about appearances and assumptions but also with one of my favourite poets as I can now celebrate his famous words with complete honesty, without as much of an iota of doubt that might tarnish their timeless beauty.

So over to the readers now - what's your take on beauty, truth and stereotypes? Is being beautiful an advantage in our super materialistic world? Have your reactions, choices and decisions been influenced by external appearances? Or can you honestly say that you are free of such prejudices?

The right to choose

The battle of the sexes continues unabated. Never has the need to prove herself been more acute for the urban woman than it is today. Driven by the fire to succeed, she has broken all stereotypes to emerge victorious in even the hitherto typically male bastions. While these stupendous achievements are playing a necessarily substantial role in the general uplifting of the position of women, it has led to a new kind of stereotypical thinking.

“Are you working?” This is perhaps one of the most frequently asked questions by women to women when they meet for the first time. On the face of it, it seems a most innocent question – pleasant small talk, perfect to break the ice. But the answer to that question often holds the key to how she will be assessed and summed up. If the reply happens to be ‘yes’, well then she would come across as smart, modern, capable – the ideal liberated woman. And heaven help her, if the answer is ‘no’ then the reaction is ‘oh okay’, but the eyes give away that she has been graded a few notches lower. Is this kind of a reaction befitting of a liberated mind?

While it is of utmost importance that every individual, irrespective of gender, has the capacity to be financially independent, and every woman has the freedom to pursue her dreams and ambitions, it is just as important for her to have the freedom to choose that she doesn’t want to work without being regressively labelled ‘housewife’. If a well qualified woman wishes to put career plans on hold and play full time mom to her kids for a few years, so be it. It neither means that she is ‘wasting’ her education (if that can ever be possible!!), nor that she has all of a sudden turned into a docile, homely creature, devoid of ambition.

It is precisely this kind of thinking that is posing as a hurdle to the empowerment and emancipation of women in the true sense of the word. It has created a mindset wherein women have been classified as ‘working’ and ‘non working’ with the latter somehow being perceived as weaker, completely ignoring and undermining all the other valuable roles she plays. Does that mean that the respect accorded to a woman and her intelligence depends on whether or not she is working? Is that the sole yardstick to measure her acumen, her capabilities and the major criterion to grant her a place among the lot of “liberated” women? Is having a job a pre requisite to be considered empowered? In her quest for emancipation, by abiding to these now conventional parameters of judging, a woman is actually undermining her own kind. At the height of her accomplishments, she must remain humble enough to never underestimate another woman who may have chosen a different path for herself; a path that may not have brought her material success, yet given her an immense sense of fulfilment. That would be real freedom – the prerogative to know her own mind, make her own decisions and choose her own path.

 
The reverse is true too. Motherhood is a natural progression in a woman's life and certainly should not put a full stop on her career aspirations. These decisions are very subjective and personal and should remain so. Should she choose to resume her career after becoming a mother, it certainly does not mean that she is going to neglect her commitments to her family and that her children will necessarily "stray".

The truly empowered woman is well educated, self respecting, self confident, proud of her womanhood, and pivotal to the well being of her family. She is well aware that through her springs the happiness and the shaping of the moral character of her children. She is, in every which way, her husband’s strength, and together they can complement each other to form such a harmonious whole that there need never be any battle of the sexes. What is of paramount importance for the welfare of any society is that the woman is content and lives a dignified life – irrespective of whether she decides to pursue a career or chooses to stay at home. It is only when the woman can learn to respect herself for what she is and free herself from all kinds of dogmas and meaningless prejudices that she would be well on the path of real equality.

Therein lies her liberation and her empowerment.