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For we must marry a beautiful person!

Last Updated 06 July 2015, 15:36 IST

Fair? Check. B’ful/Handsome? Check. Slim? Check. Tall? Check. Welcome to our booming 1000-crore matrimonial business. Be it the classifieds in newspapers, or the newly emerging matrimonial sites, these platforms help people in India to acquire a suitable partner for marriage. However, apart from the usual financial and career qualifications, the checklists of these marriage seekers say a lot about our shameful mindsets.

The ads placed in newspapers and websites are consistent with the requirements of beautiful and fair brides, or tall and handsome grooms. However, this makes one question the concept of compatibility and the perceptions of “beauty” that people have in their minds. Would a girl not be suitable for marriage if she was highly qualified and intelligent but had dark complexion? Or would the guy with the same redeeming qualities be not fit for a match if he wasn’t of a certain height?  “I hate it.

These requirements that they put, these are disheartening. If a person does not fit this kind of a profile, it makes their self esteem go really down,” Gargi Narang, a student of Moti Lal Nehru College, tells Metrolife. The 21 year old also believes that “this fact only elucidates our shallowness and obsession with certain skin colours and body types, which is not healthy at all.”

It makes one wonder on how someone being of a certain physical appearance, adds to their ‘compatibility’ as a partner. Some researchers talk about our penchant for fair skin; attributing it to Indians being colonised by the fair-skinned British and the enforced status of them being superior to us in our subconscious, a thing that we’ve carried in our culture for so long that we fail to question the utter stupidity and fatality of it. And industries make money out of such deeply held notions of beauty, through skin fairness creams that sell equally for men and women now, or the fat-slimming gels and lotions, or height improving medicines and miracles, to become tall and slim and be thus better suited for a prospective partner.

Visits a traditional photo studio and one will find aplenty portfolios of these brides and grooms. The photos, sent to various families, are shot in a way that they enhance the physical appearance of the person, from normal to even outlandish standards. Umesh Aggarwal, a veteran photographer of Prem Studios, talks about the demands that reach him for such portfolios. “Around 20 years back, parents used to come to me saying they want a simple photograph of their child for marriage purposes. Now, people want to look modern, and we highlight their personalities and appearances through camera lightings and angles,” he tells Metrolife.

The question also arises on what defines or qualifies as ‘beautiful’. “These words are not only demeaning but also foolish to use. I’d say physical appearance is a quality that affects us through our senses. However, the way you see purple might be different from the way I see purple. My beautiful may not be your beautiful. These ads just reflect our surfaced thinking,” Krishna Singh, a psychology student, tells Metrolife.

It’s time we shed such boxed perceptions of beauty and their requirement in an individual for us to like them. For as Garrison Keillor quite aptly put it- “Beauty isn’t worth thinking about, what’s important is your mind. You don’t want a fifty dollar haircut on a fifty cent mind.”

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(Published 06 July 2015, 15:36 IST)

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