The first time I was told that I was beautiful was on a train. Barely touching 14, I was on my way back from my boarding school for the dreaded holidays, trying to stay as invisible as one could. Yet a kind lady, who looked like a beautiful goddess herself, with long flowing hair, had somehow found me and declared it out aloud, not once, but twice. My teenage body, hiding a lifetime of abuse and shame, went into what I would realise decades later, were the symptoms of a panic attack. Much to her shock, I had to race without excusing myself and run to the bathroom of the first class AC compartment to throw up. That’s what acts of love can do to you. Random acts of kindness from random strangers become pivotal moments in your life. That’s the power of being called beautiful. You may think it doesn’t matter and you can hide in intellectual or sports pursuits, that you are holier than thou when it comes to the trillions of dollars spent worldwide to market all kinds of beauty products—from billboards to your social media feed, and so on. But it does. I was reading or hiding inside a book, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. It was, ironically, about an abused child called Pecola Breedlove who wanted to be beautiful so that she could be loved and accepted and thought that having blue eyes would make her beautiful. Part of my abused childhood and parental neglect was that I was allowed to read and do things that I shouldn’t be allowed to, until at least half a decade later.
Decades later, fragments of what I had written here and there came together and The Water Phoenix—my magical realism memoir about an abused child’s lifelong search for what was love and what wasn’t—was published and won the hearts of endless abused kids, now adults, who have never felt beautiful. Or wanted. A book has endless layers, as each reader reveals to me. An abused child is made to feel ugly every single day.
What is beauty? Beauty is love. To be beautiful is to be loved. Unlike Pecola, I had decided to shun all ideas of physical beauty and sexiness, and focused on the mind. Unlike little girls, I had no dolls; was made to use Lifebuoy soaps; was surrounded by tonnes of uncles; and, taken to roadside barbers for “boy-cut hair” by someone who noticed me randomly. Until that moment in the train, physical beauty was non-existent to me. To me, beauty and love were the same thing. It took me decades of radical self-love, every minute, processes detailed in The Water Phoenix and in my columns, to become absolutely stunning in my own eyes. Like all broken hearted ones, I always found everyone and everything beautiful. You know, the ones who will find ruins prettier than an alabaster mansion, a dying deaf and blind dog more beautiful than an Afghan Hound or a St Bernard, a three-legged stray cat more suitable of acceptance than a Maine Coon or a Persian cat.
As therapy is showing us, when you change, your world changes too. This is when I wasn’t expecting the world to turn, ironically even more cruel than when I was left just like those animals, neglected, starving, as a child. My radical self-love, self-acceptance, I thought, was normal. I understand that I lived in California, which, unlike most of the world, has always been wellness and New Agey, hipster haven, but it was common to see people in my yoga studio who had covered their scars, of bullet wounds, of knife wounds, of where others and they themselves had cut themselves with tattoos. Each tattoo, a radical act of celebration, of breathing life in and becoming beautiful. An act of radical self-love. Or breast cancer survivors, loving themselves, finding themselves sexy sirens, especially the missing breast. Breathing right into that void, until there was no wound, no void but pure love.
Being seen as extremely beautiful has cost me my entire life. I have retreated into extreme solitude and barring three or four people, nobody knows my whereabouts.
Suddenly, acting like them non-stop made me irresistibly beautiful to anyone and everyone. Two decades after that train incident, not a day goes by when someone doesn’t call me hot, beautiful, sexy, and so on. Irrespective of my marital status, I often get proposals, some downright lewd, forcing me to build walls the size of the Great Wall of China, walls Trump wishes to build around America, simply to survive. My beauty was extremely hard-won. My beauty was freedom.
It is something I work on through constant inner work and psychological processes, literally stopping the world to nurse myself like a newborn every five minutes. It has nothing to do with the $429.2 billion cosmetics market or the $62.6 billion anti-aging market, regular women around me contributed to by investing in anything from Botox and fillers to retinol and anti-ageing creams.
I cut my own hair, use Boroline and sunscreen, a dash of lip colour and kajal. No facials or any treatments. The last time I stepped into a beauty salon was two and a half decades ago, for my wedding. My beauty is completely from the inside. It is not something that money can buy and so, ageing seems to have had no impact on it either. And yet, not a day goes by when people don’t judge me. It seems that all they see is the exterior.
Being beautiful was not something I planned on. I was just a girl loving herself out of extreme abuse, suicide attempts and hate and neglect, trying to live. Being beautiful has completely killed my career. People can’t seem to see beyond it. No matter how powerful my work is. If I get work, it is “because of her looks”. Or jealousy won’t let me get work. I am seen as a temptation everywhere and kept out of social get-togethers, when I am literally just minding my own business. In patriarchal roles, I keep myself extremely contained in my marriage, toning myself down, because I have done enough psychology to know how insecure a man can get. I had married my then best friend for this reason, because I was terrified even more of the endless sexual advances and only felt safe with him. “You’re so beautiful. What are you even doing with me?” he will often say, shaming me.
The worst are the women, my so-called friends. They have put me on an impossibly-high pedestal, one I never signed up for. It is all that everyone I meet for work meetings seem to notice. When I “look good”, those problems emerge. But dare I put on weight on my upper arms or face—normal signs of ageing—and everyone will cruelly point out that I am becoming “a fat aunty”. “How are you fat there?” “Why are you looking like this?” “Stupid you look, work out.” I need to point out that my circles consist of highly educated, intellectual elite, feminists, so-called empowered women who hold high executive positions. “Oh, you put on weight on your thighs.” “No way, can you just use Boroline. Your skin is glowing. You just don’t want to tell us your secrets.” It is endless. Frankly, there is no difference between them or my impoverished, illiterate maids who say the exact same things.
All my life all I wanted was to belong, to be accepted, like I have accepted everyone. It is every human’s basic need for we were born into tribes, where we belonged. This is why the lack of belonging has led to urban loneliness, a tsunami of mental health issues causing shooter attacks, suicides and so on.
In patriarchal roles, I keep myself extremely contained in my marriage, toning myself down, because I have done enough psychology to know how insecure a man can get.
My own healing made me “beautiful”. Not anything cosmetic. But inside, I am still the same kid who was reading The Bluest Eye. Nothing has changed. Being seen as extremely beautiful has cost me my entire life. I have retreated into extreme solitude and barring three or four people, nobody knows my whereabouts. If I don’t post on social media, they think I might have committed suicide and get alarmed, once almost arriving with the police. Being beautiful in a career, where I wanted to be celebrated for my mind, my work, has made me even more lonely than I was as a child who was constantly told she was ugly. I am often asked what I am doing here… I should be an actress, lose weight and be a model. Basically be in the beauty industry. Being seen as beautiful has made me a threat and has made it almost impossible for me to find work, no matter how good my portfolio of existing work is. The men, well, that’s expected. Pathetic, but patriarchal facts are patriarchal facts. It is the women, whom I saw as my sisters, who broke my heart, knifed my soul, killed me and continue to say, “you’re still beautiful for a fat girl” with their ideas of beauty, taught by society. Note the constant emphasis on weight? Body shaming of women by “empowered” women. What is empowerment is defined by the beauty industry (In India, the beauty industry is projected to reach $2.27 billion by 2028). Being perceived as beautiful has ruined my entire life.
Being perceived as beautiful has made me as obvious as—and I quote someone who described me thus—“A unicorn amidst mules.” He meant that I needed to be in surroundings like other beautiful people because it had come to a point where I couldn’t take a walk without attracting stares. Couldn’t fill out petitions even in California while saying I can’t vote or I don’t support a certain politician. All responses were, “But you’re too beautiful not to.” Men will fall in love and lust, turn poets, turn me into a muse, saying “you’re too beautiful to exist/it hurts,” when all I’m doing is asking for work collaborations. I’d like to reiterate the word perceived. Because all beauty is perceived beauty. Had it happened earlier, perhaps it might have been better to stay in the beauty industry. All famous beautiful people have always been deeply lonely. The world killed Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana in different ways for being the most beautiful women in the world of their time. I wasn’t a star or a princess, just a regular writer, and without their privileges, I was just as lonely, shunned, feared. My physical beauty, which I couldn’t care less about, has become a mirror for people’s ugly projections, the power of pop culture turning masses shallow and soulless. It feels like a collective rape of what should have been my life. Ultimately, whether I was perceived as an ugly child or “the most beautiful woman I have seen,” I am perhaps even more isolated now. I don’t know which is better. It has become impossible to have friendships without incurring jealousy, insecurity and being a threat, not just stirring my girlfriends’ demons, but turning them into demonesses.
There is nothing worse than being beautiful. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.
(Views expressed are personal)
(This appeared in the print as 'The Curse Of Being Beautiful')
Rituparna Chatterjee is an award-winning journalist, columnist and author
