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[social-justice12]

The Weight of Beauty

What is beauty? What is like to be “perfect”? Who’s value relies on appearance?

Every day society tries to force their ideas of what their conception of beauty and perfection is, and the truth is that nobody can escape from their power, nobody is outside of their reach…

TV, Internet, magazines…you name it, they’ll use everything they've got under their sleeve to try to sell you their ideals, to turn you into a "make-money-and-die-consuming" robot. Exploiting your weaknesses and desires to feel better in this ruthless world.

Nothing really matters to them, except you buying their way of thinking and with that, all the “be beautiful toolkits” they have created during all these years. From creams and lotions and magical weight-loss pills, to painful medical procedures. Just to try to be "perfect” and to "fit" into society's moulds. 

This massive and contagious disease called “perfection” is everywhere, and crosses the line drawn between that which is acceptable, just to trespass the bridge that leads to your value as a human being.

You shouldn’t be measured by your weight or your the size of your pants and shirts, or even by your family genetic heritage. We are ALL IMPERFECT human beings,  and it doesn’t matter what anyone tries to do, nobody is above others by the way they look.

"Physical beauty" comes with an expiration date marked on our foreheads. No matter how hard we try to hide behind the cosmetic age-defying walls, our true forms will catch up to us one day. So why should we try so hard to become someone or something that we are not? Isn’t that senseless? Pointless even? 

It’s ok to feel better by taking care of yourself. Some lotion here and there and maybe even some homemade beauty treatments, but never to get to the point of obsessing with it. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t mater how beautiful you can potentially look on the outside if your heart and soul are rotting away with ugliness. 

If at the end of the day you allow the “weight of beauty” to completely consume you, while being careless about what matters the most in life, you will have wasted all that time in nothingness and thrown all that money (that could have potentially been used to make the world a better place) straight into the trashcan. Because, inevitably, no matter how much you tried perfecting it, this body is going to be in the ground rotting away one day.

You’re absolutely NOT measured by your tiny waist, muscles, flat belly or firm legs, all of that means NOTHING if you don’t remember to give something positive back to this world. If you don’t share your happiness and goodness with the ones in need, if you don’t act kindly and compassionately, if you are not respectful and honest, what you look on the outside means nothing, because you are selfish and stone hearted. 

Im telling you, a big heart is a  thousand times more valuable than a fit body and flawless skin, and it is not something you tell people you have, it’s something that others can see by your actions and not by the way you look. Being caring is worth so much more than a pretty face.

And even if there are some people who care more about what they see, there will always more people who put integrity and values over physical beauty. As the latter one will always be temporary and an attribute that fades over time.

YOU define what beauty is. Perfection is a very subjective term that only describes something we, as narrow minded humans, think is the best, but is it really the best? Because only God knows and will ever know what real perfection is. I would say that it is unrealistic to even consider that we are able to judge others based on the self imposed weight of beauty, because who are we to call someone "ugly"? We only know of the beauty that we see on the outside. What about the beauty on the inside? Does that have no value anymore, in this time and age? The word "ugly" itself, is SO PAINFULLY degrading and HURTFUL. How is someone supposed to recover, mentally and physiologically, after being told that their face/body structure is not good enough for this world. Something that they had no power over when trying to become and shape the person that they want to be. The amount of "beauty" one has is literally just GIVEN to them in a RANDOM selection. How is that, solely for some people, what defines who they are? I would argue that calling someone ugly is just as bad as calling someone gay a "faggit", or calling an African American a "nigger". Why? Because both of those things are not something that someone gets to choose to be, yet society still has a negative connotation for them instead of accepting and celebrating them. Next time you want to use the word ugly, think about how disgusting and offensive that word is. It kills off any chance a person has of becoming something in this world, once labelled that word, just because they don't fit into your standards of what "beauty" is.   

Every person in the world is beautiful because they were created by the universe. Just like the stars and plants and trees and oceans. Nature doesn't need to prove that it's beautiful, and neither do you.

[social-justice12]

It Ain't Rape?

The day #ItAintRape trended on Twitter, thousands of survivor wondered: What did I do to deserve this?  Why is the world so cruel? as they felt themselves breaking all over again, while being reminded of the immense pain  they’ve already been through. As if it was not hard enough trying to go through life unnoticed, suddenly they were AGAIN, the source of ridicule. Mama, was it my fault?  a little girl once wondered, and now, no longer little,  she asks herself the same question, Was it my fault? The posts say, it’s not rape if she is cute, and a boy looks at himself in the mirror, crying over the reflection which will never look the same, and thinking how he’s AGAIN being excluded from mention. Feeling selfish for his thoughts he finds himself with a razor in his hand saying It’s too late for me. I really am broken. His hands have blood on them now! We could have stopped the blood flow. People said the abuse made him gay, and he felt confused  Is that really what made me gay? he whispered, alone in his room, thinking there’s really no one who cares as he relapsed over his past, present and future. It’s too late for me now. A survivor’s first reaction quite often is not to blame the attacker, but to feel ashamed and responsible,  because the society is teaching us that it should matter what a girl wears or what kind of a future the rapist could have had, if THAT girl just said she wanted it,  if she just agreed her worth was less than his worth.  Mama, I said no! she screams as the woman who bore her looks away,  wondering what she did to deserve such a damaged child, and the world fails the girl once more. Instead of making #ItAintRape trend, we could have made  #JusticeForRapeVictims popular! But most people choose to ignore the injustice in front of them as they laugh at the jokes, claiming they are harmless, when we should ALL be outraged at the lengths rapists go to make their behavior seem normal to others. Chill. somebody tells a victim, when she dares to be hurt by their words, and everybody looks away. By pretending you don’t see the problem,  you are basically saying: Go ahead, rape again! We’re gonna have your back. and I refuse to be that person. So should YOU. Even if it does not personally concern you today it might in the future and you will be left feeling disgusted  at your own past behaviour

[social-justice12]

Racism

Racism has been an issue for so long, one would think that by now the human race should be, at least, tolerant towards the fact that there are people with different skin colours in this world. Sadly, that is not the case, and there is still a huge amount of prejudice, discrimination, and antagonism directed against people because of their race. Which is rooted from the belief that one's own race is superior to all or some other races. Both forms of racism, overt and convert, are absolutely disgusting and should not even be happening in the first place. Personally, i do not think one form of racism is worse than the other, because at the end of the day, both of them degrade and dehumanize people solely based on skin colour and culture. Many of the times covert racism, which is more common in today's society, turns into overt racism. Taking the Michael Brown situation for example, at first many people, mostly from the Caucasian background, were trying to accuse the the victim, Michael, of stealing or being "too big and scary" for the police officer to handle, which ultimately lead to his "unpreventable death". Recently, however, there has been an increasing number of racist people overtly stating their racist opinions on many social media websites, about how the reason Michael was murdered was because of his African American background and that he deserved such cruelty because of it. Reading such comments really makes one sit back and think about how this world is spiralling out of control.

In Canada, i think there is less racism in general, compared to the rest of the world. We, as a country, are more acceptant towards each others differences, even though this was not always the case. But just as every other country in the world, we too have the occasional overt/covert racism situation. From being treated rudely at shopping malls to bluntly being called a terrorist on the streets, i personally have experienced racism in Canada, so it does definitely exist in both forms.

[social-justice12]

How Many?

How many Muslim children have to be lined up and executed by the Taliban before the world recognizes that the oppressed do not deserve to be categorized with their oppressors 

[social-justice12]

The Receiving Side

What gives someone the right to kill another human being just because they are different from them, unfamiliar to what they are use to seeing. What gave that cop the right to kill Michael Brown? The fact that Michael was "scary looking"? HOW DOES THAT JUSTIFY PUTTING 7 BULLETS IN HIS BODY? Just because someone doesn't look the way you want them to look, you, all of a sudden, wield the power to kill them. Right? Because the only way someone is allowed to be "big and scary" without being on the receiving side of a gunshot, is if the colour of their skin is white. How do you kill another human being and still have the conscience to claim to be the victim in that situation? 

[social-justice12]

Who am I?

This question has always been quite difficult for me to answer, because I am still trying to learn about the kind of person I am or aspire to become. The outermost shell of my being, is a daughter to two of the most amazing, supportive, and hardworking parents in the world, at least. I am also a sister to my twenty year old brother, who is three years older than me. We get along most of the times, but still occasionally argue and fight over little, insignificant things. When this happens we usually tend to pretend that nothing has happened ten minutes later, which is a good thing, because most of the time nothing actually does happen. The best part about my brother is that he acts like he doesn't care about me around me, but around other people he praises me and tells everyone how lucky he is to have a sister like me. Which I find defines the kind of brother-sister relationship we have, because I do the same to him. When I was about five years old, my parents noticed that I was very athletic, so they enrolled me in soccer. I played the sport for about 6 years until I was the age of about eleven. That was the year my family and I became baptized Sikhs, and as baptized Sikhs, we are asked to wear five articles of our faith. Since one of the five articles include a dagger called a "Kirpan", which I cannot remove unless absolutely necessary, I chose to stop playing soccer, due to having to remove it during games. Religion has and will always be a huge part of who I am. It gives me stability, strength, and a purpose in life. Every morning, I get up and do five prayers before going to school. These prayers help me get through the day knowing that I am being watched over and taken care of by the Almighty. One of the most inspiring things about Sikhism for me, is that we are taught to always stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves and stand against those who oppress the innocent. Which is also the reason why we wear the "Kirpan", to defend the defenceless, and to rebel against corruption. Putting aside religion, I am a very outgoing and talkative person. I only start talking, however, once I begin to feel comfortable. Before that happens, I am the complete opposite: awkward, shy and quiet. I am generally very open minded and like to try new things. I use to be extremely opinionated and stubborn about a lot of things, but as I grow older, I am beginning to realize that having such a closed off mindset restrains one from developing, as a person. Which results in becoming an arrogant and negative human being. I aspire to one day become so compassionate and acceptant towards everyone around me, that all I give off are positive vibes. Well, that's what I've figured out so far about who I am or want to be, but I still have a lot of growing up and learning to do, which I am looking forward to.