Ucheoma‎ Onwutuebe: The Veneer of Beauty

Life has a way of tickling you awake to the irony of certain realities.

Here is an instance: You must have come across those kinds of women that tick all the boxes of society’s standards of beauty: the right complexion, the perfect size, the curves to rob for, the works; but yet these women are always crying the blues of how men treat them worse than dirt. Then you have the second class of women who do not meet all of these yardsticks of beauty and yet they get the better of life’s situations. They get treated right in relationships. They work and demand the best of opportunities and inevitably, they get them.

When I was younger, this situation was lost on me. I had always believed that physical beauty was some legal tender for the finer things in life, both tangible and intangible. Of course I saw some of the doors it opened and the attention one was accorded if rightly endowed. But as I grew, I noticed the elusive nature of outward beauty, which could be likened to a rubber band with an elastic limit and even a breaking point.

When the truth of this situation dawned on me, I stopped making excuses for the things that didn’t become in my life after I had tried my best to look the part and act the part . I snapped out of the assumption that these things did not happen because I was undeserving of them. I stopped seeing anything or anyone as being too good for me. Afterall, one cannot be blamed for the shape of one’s face and the body one came in.

I learnt that when I indulge in the wonderful fripperies of beauty’s enhancement, to add an angle to the face and a lift to the body’s frame, these “helpers of the work” were only enhancements – an addendum to a larger concept of beauty. Because beneath the veneer coatings of perfectly arched brows and designer apparels, if the wearer’s self-esteem is as low as carpet grasses, it would make no difference. The finer things of life would elude you still. No matter if you walk on towering heels, if inwardly you are ambling away like a wounded animal, the bullies and predators of life would hunt you down and deal with you without mercy.

So I learnt, that before I drape myself in the curtains of outward beauty, there are some basics that should be fixed. Some expectations that should be met. Some standards to demand of life. I am not speaking of standards so high that jumping from atop Mount Everest would be much safer than meeting them. But these are what I expect: to be treated well and to be handled fearfully.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime |  Luba V Nel