Beauty is pain, indeed

By Sayali Pawar

‘Beauty is pain’. It’s something that’s imprinted on a girl’s credulous mind. As early as possible, as soon as they start making sense of a thought, even before words, when they understand the visitors’ bias and talks of which one’s going to break how many hearts. That beauty has names like snow and white. Our grannies know many stories of fair princesses winning the world by winning the prince. In a way taught how power belongs to the prince and the only way to reach the top is being chosen by them, to be chosen for your beauty. The stories aren’t always that shallow though, sometimes it about the pretty princesses who got greedy and lost their beauty thus losing the prince thus their power. I know it’s nothing original, that this is an overworked idea and the world is changing. Little ladies are no more constrained by long braids and wetnurses today teach of kindness and intelligence rather. Same stories but without the metaphor.

Little girls don’t need metaphors, they need reassurances.

I know all of this is finding light in this age and the dark is getting expelled little by little. I know the world has grown bored to the same record over and over of how the traditional notions manipulated for capitalist propaganda had been poisoning generations. I know, I know everyone now knows. I’m not talking to be heard, I’m just talking to not hear it all by myself; because you need to understand, the world is learning but I’m still the grown up out of a child who believed beauty is pain, the absence and its fight, all of it.

By Sayali Pawar