Mirror Mirror On the Wall!

Have you ever wondered why it always takes women longer than men to get ready? And why is it that women are so conscious of their looks all the time while men even barely comb their hair in the day?

Well I think the reason for this is the ideology, that has been passed on from years and years, generations to generations that a woman, in order to look or be called beautiful, has to dress, behave, and most importantly look in a certain way, depending on their cultures. While the man has to simply wear nice crisp clothes and perfume and walla… hes all ready!!

My reason to write this article is because to me this somehow creates an image of women being looked upon as objects than human beings who are constantly judged and examined mostly on the basis of their hair, makeup, clothes and their overall looks. Why is it women have to spend so much time and energy in trying to look all glamorous and seductive while men have only one job to just ogle at them, as if we women are some delicious candy, waiting to be unwrapped.
[Well to be honest, I, myself, am guilty of this thought process and have been spending so much money and hours in the salon to look “beautiful and glamorous” and somehow never satisfied with my looks ]

While I understand that the laws of attraction requires you to look a certain way to get attention from the opposite sex but aren’t god gifted looks and smile and emotions inside, good enough reasons of make someone fall in love with you or get your attention?

Often, as a child, I used to wonder why is it that my mom took most time in the world in getting ready for her to look amazing( which she always did irrespective),  while my dad would take just 5 minutes and would still look amazing!. And I used to think I wish I had the power to look that good just like my dad just in 5 minutes so that I don’t waste my time and energy in trying to look good and I rather do something more meaningful.

However, as I grew up I realized that, from time immemorial, women all over the world have been taught since childhood how to sit, how to dress well (according to their own traditions), how to speak, basically all grooming is done in trying to make them better and more beautiful as well as attractive which includes going through some painful process of waxing, getting perfect eyebrows, nails and so on and without giving much importance to the god gifted looks, emotions and brains the women are born with. While the boys are allowed to be own their own, use more of their gifted brain muscles and little time is spent on them in teaching how to behave well in public (basically teaching them not to be rowdy and speak well) and absolutely no time is spent on “improving” their looks. The general thought process is , they always look good , till the time they have taken a shower and are wearing nice washed clothes!

I feel, we as women are gifted with attractive looks and we don’t need to work on us so hard all the time to look good. Our idea of “a beautiful woman” needs to be changed. We are not objects that we need a wrapper around us to attract opposite sex. Now don’t get me wrong here, I totally believe in the concept of hygiene and definitely believe one should be hygienic at all times. But we as women should learn to embrace ourselves more and more without being conscious of how our hair, nails, clothes or face should be all the time.

The idea of sexy, sultry women in men’s heads needs to be changed to beautiful god gifted looks, empowering, sentimental and understanding of emotions.  Because no matter how many layers of wrappers are wrapped around us or we as women wrap it around us with surgeries, makeup, sexy clothing, etc, in the end for us women it all boils down to the emotions and heart. If no men can respect us as human beings, then we don’t need to be around them.

I think we need men to tell us we don’t need to take that long to look beautiful because we look beautiful as who we are. We need men to encourage us to be ourselves in whatever form we are, like we give them that freedom. We need men to appreciate the heart, the smile and emotions and not our choice of clothes, or our madeup face or hair.

Most importantly we as women should encourage other women to live with freedom of being just themselves and appreciating the soul in them rather than judging them for not being dressed a certain way, or not making effort to “look beautiful”. We need to support each other, encourage each other, should remind them regularly that they are beautiful as who they are and they don’t need to stress on their looks constantly.

Our choice of clothes, hair, shoes etc should be a reflection of our innerselves and not a concept to look good or attract attention to fit in the world by the definition we only have created . We should learn to smile at ourselves when we look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning right after we wake up.

IF we want men to stop objectifying us women then we need to start from within. We need to embrace ourselves as who we are and stop glorifying the made up world in trying too hard to look hot, sexy, glamorous, beautiful, etc. just to fit in. Because we as women are naturally all of such things without even trying too hard and we don’t need to be stamped by men for approval.