After Visiting India,

I was left in awe by the beauty, elegance, and fashion sense of Indian Women. The most unforgettable fashion piece I encountered while in India was the traditional Indian Sari. Women in Indian would strut like queens as they draped these colorful fabric pieces across their full figures bodies. As India modernizes, the Sari follows suits. Modern Fashion magazines all over the World (Vogue, Elle, and other outlets) cannot ignore the profound impact that the Sari still carries in India.  The Sari is as old as the civilization of India. Cotton was grown and woven into fabric in India five thousand years ago and is one of the symbols that a young girl has reached womanhood.

Historically, the concept of beauty in ancient India was that of small waist and large bust and hips, as is evident in the sculptures of those times. And the Sari seemed to be the perfect dress to flaunt those proportions as it exposes the waist of a woman and emphasizes the waist and bust with the pleated fabric.

Along with Vogue’s 5th Anniversary and my trip to India, DashaBella celebrates the Sari and the traditional classic beauty it exudes in the Indian Woman.

DashaBella  

Dear Me,

First off, I just want you to know that you’re beautiful. 

Don’t listen to what the media has to say. Don’t look at those pictures of white models plastered up everywhere – on billboards, in magazines, on the damn wall in your room. That’s where this all comes from, isn’t it – this feeling of inadequacy, of feeling like you just don’t quite fit in with what people think is pretty, cute, sexy, beautiful. Well, I just want you to know that those chinky features are beautiful. They’re what make you different from the rest of the world.

It’s so unfortunate that that the popular image of beauty is seen through a Western lens – the straight-as-an-arrow nose, the full curling lashes that frame an actual double-lidded eye (Asians, you know what I’m talking about with this one), the angular cheekbones, or even the simple fact that hair and eye color aren’t always black or dark brown. I don’t know how or when exactly it got to be that the more “white” features you had, the more beautiful you were, but this is reality and it will be for some time. I guess to the media’s credit, there’re now more Asian stars on shows than there ever were before, and there’s now always that one token Asian on those make-up ads in the group of four girls, (which we all know is to relate more to consumers).

Asian culture has been so scarred by Western perceptions of beauty. You’ve got the girls that dye their hair light brown and blonde, you’ve got the ones who wear contact lenses to make their pupils different colors instead of the boring black we were all born with, and you’ve got the ones that never go without makeup for the simple reason that they just don’t feel as naturally beautiful without it like other girls do. But then these are just the tip of the iceberg. There are girls who actually go to the length of getting surgery done on their eyes to make them bigger, their noses to make them more prominent, their faces to make them more angular. That’s how unhappy they are with their natural appearance. And it’s all done to conform to the Western ideals of what beauty is.

I know you would never go to that length; I know you have grown to like your slanted eyes, the button nose, those rounded, soft features – not that you haven’t had your fair share of torment because of these distinctly Asian characteristics. I know you have grown to embrace your own beauty unique to your ethnicity, but I just wish the rest of us would too.

Love,

A.B.C