VidYouth

What’s common between

Ugly Duckling and Ugly Betty?

It’s not just the misleading adjective

But the fact that they are pretty!

Had only the ugly duckling been ugly FOR REAL, either the show wouldn’t have been so popular or it’d have been famous for its first ever suicide-of-a-depressed-duck theme! And the closest Ugly Betty would’ve gotten to be a comedy show is by becoming a laughing stock if Betty (America Ferrara) wasn’t how she is in reality. The word ugly is just a demeanour; a camouflage. At the end of the day, it’s beauty that runs the show everywhere, everyday. And this Valentine’s day is going to be no different. So to all those bugs going after the trance-inducing scent of roses, remember: The thorns out there are going to prick one real hard ‘cos none of those rosy faces expect to get ‘bugged’ by what’s not pretty.

Lovely are the Loved

Had only Johnny Lever replaced Hrithik Roshan in the movie Kaho Na Pyar Hai, would it still have been a hit? “NO!  He’s got no six pack, he hasn’t got the looks and Amisha would never fall for (someone like) him!”, says Vaijayanthi Kari, a student of Villa Marie. “Yeah, I think he should have been replaced… but someone even better,” opines Trina Roy, a second year student of CVR College of Engineering . “Only if the role was being Amisha’s father, yeah,” says Rukmini Harshita of the same college. See? It’s basic instinct! (Darn! Even that word is copyrighted to a beauty!) Beauty is loved and hence, beauty SELLS. Everyone wants it at ANY COST. And this mindset (or should it be called desperation?) is exactly what the entertainment industry is BANKING on. It’s very rarely that a movie has love between tow toad-faced characters as its main theme, unless we are talking of animation, which as everyone knows, is not even faintly close to reality. The movies have impressed this opinion in people’s mind that love happens only between someone like Scarlett Johansson and Justin Timberlake, and everyone else only gets to watch it. (After paying for it at the ticket counter, that is.) The paradox is that everyone has bifurcated all the people into ‘the loved’ and the ‘unlovely’ and gave themselves a slot in the former category. This trend gets one wondering if the famous saying has been rephrased to “Love is blind TO THE UNATTRACTIVE.”

Beauty and is the Beast

Love IS blind! Credits: Wording Noise

Fantasies are fun! It’s where one gets to hear an “I do!” from Demi Moore or where one rides away with a handsome prince on a unicorn! But it pricks when reality brings everything to a screeching halt and replaces the unicorn-riding prince with a rather unpicturesque halloween figure and Demi Moore with witch Hazel.

When the fantasy imbues a little too deep, it might be dangerous. It paves way to expectations over how beautiful their sweetheart should be, which can really hurt as the reality is not very generous. “People have become pretty much expectant, that is why most of the relationships are falling apart,” opines Manisha, a third year Biotechnology student of Loyola academy. It’s high time people realise that beauty is just an aphrodisiac, and should stop creating a livelihood for the psychotherapists. The world would be a happier place to live in if the so-called love-denied whining souls realise that an “attractive sweetheart” is often just a work of fiction. After all, who’d have read Shakespeare had he written about how much Romeo smelled of rotten eggs or how many head lice Juliet had!?

The Don’t-Cares

Amidst all the chaos about love and beauty, there is this lovely bunch

of ’unlovelies’ who don’t really care if they are loved. They don’t whine about not being attractive because what they love doesn’t require them to be so. They know that world has more beautiful things than beauty itself. They are the ones who prefer watching Tom And Jerry to sitting mushy-eyed watching a melancholic love story, beautiful curves only reminds them of roller coasters, and if they say love is in the air, it only means they can smell something cooking in the canteen! “Pasta and chilly sauce!” declared Vamsi Krishna Malladi, a third year student of CVR College of Engineering, and a diehard foodie, on being asked who his valentine would be this 14th. For one thing, they don’t care about not finding love, because love eventually finds them. Well, happy go lucky, don’t they?

Know that being pretty is just projected as a qualification to be loved, it really isn’t. Everyone has two faces, one which the world gets to see and judge and the other, deep within. And in the beautiful Marlyn Manroe’s words, “If you’re gonna be two-faced, at least make one of them pretty.”

Happy Valentines Day in belated!