:|D

Let me tell you something about people who think they are gorgeous. Or glamorous. Or any of that. They all have something in common. THEY’VE BEEN TOLD!

Campaigns go berserk, and magazines promote articles, even parents, make sure that every child, or every grown up knows that they look lovely. That they are lovely. Which is true. This truth however, is disguised in the name of irony… for every child is born innocent. Fat. Thin. Lanky. Queer. Regular. The categories vary, but they are all born clueless…after which the unattractive get teased, the chiseled get praised, the fat get prodded and the lanky get shoved with bowlfuls of food. Even the regular get stereotyped as boring. As for the queer, let’s just not even go there.

Though you may misconstrue me for a cynic after the above paragraph, I care to disagree. This is genuinely the way of the world, and it does not beat me that the people who are conventionally attractive, are extremely confident (COS THEY’VE BEEN TOLD). Keeping up with the Jones’s has become a cosmetic reality and though I deeply appreciate constructive criticism and compliments per say, take it easy small world! You might not like the way someone does their eyebrows, or braids their hair, or is overweight, and the freedom of expression is all yours. To obsess on this flaw which is apparent to you however, may curtail someone else’s similar freedom, one that I’d like to call originality. To be concerned about one’s health is one thing, but to use it as an excuse for mockery, another. To tease is one thing, to torment, another. Tangible as the flaw may be, such impulse on your part, might scar an intangible part of someone else’s personality.

Try if you may- compliment with warmth, listen with grace, critique with mercy and look beyond the picture. What you see, is if not always, seldom, what you get. Give people benefit of the doubt; give beauty the justice it deserves.

Phew! That was deep. For my shallow standards at least!

However, this does, as you may imagine, come with a story.

This was the picture I uploaded on facebook around last month. I’m not much of a facebooker, but thought it was rather cute, would suffice as a profile picture for recognition, and boasted of the first dog show I’d been to, which was a ball.

The 30 second upload(slow 3G), left me miserable in a days’ time.

  WHY?

  My GUMS were on display!

  WHY?

 Cos it was an extremely happy, candid moment caught on camera.

I was hurt at first, and cringed to delete the picture, a move my ego did not appreciate. While a couple of likes popped by, around a dozen of my friends pinged, asking me to take off the atrocious gummy bear. They called the dog the saving grace of the picture. The catch- I knew the dog was adorable but hadn’t even noticed my gums before. High school came crashing down on me in my 20’s. When I hit rock bottom- When my relatives called my mother, asking her to take off my picture – “ What if a prospective groom sees it Jaya?”. –INSANE!

I’d like to think of myself as a rational person, but my fuse had been blown. The bestest of my friends consoled me saying surgery was an option and they knew some place well- known for gum contouring. My parents  on the other hand, skimmed my matrimony site to make sure I was smiling ‘”slightly and pleasantly” in all the pictures. No offence cos I love them all , but I didn’t know I was AS flawed till this stoooopid profile picture. I always knew my gums could be seen and was often teased for the same. My sister called it the Mona-without-Lisa-Smile (Mona meaning gums in my native), but never did I recognize it to be that big a deal. Was it that I never realized that I was unconsciously displaying a fugly smile? Or was it that the world around me just raised their expectations by large? I was never a supermodel, but do I look like a monster?

Which is when I did what most people do. I googled.

On gums, and pigmentation and gums, and surgery.

And I felt happy (some people say people with gummy smiles come off as genuine)

And then I felt sad (cos someone said gummy smiles are unattractive and horse-like)

And happy (Jennifer Garner, Cobie Smulders,  Kalki Koechin -grin)

And then sad (PEOPLE are creep-ed out by gummy smiles!).

This exercise went on for a while:

The anti-climax- me considering whether to go for surgery.

The climax- Deciding against it because I was afraid. Not of the cosmetologist by the corner, but of losing a part of my personality with my natural smile.

This part of my monologue is very personal, for surgery or not would be an individualistic thing.

At long last I decided to stick with my gummy smile. I realized that every ecstatic moment in my life had been captured with these gummies. I realized that my favorite teacher, whom I loved the most, had a gummier smile than mine. I realized that every photograph where my gums were missing was backed by a fake moment. 

I realized that subconsciously, my fuglyy gums had become part of beautiful me.

And that  I HAD NOT BEEN TOLD.

The profile picture stays.