What is Beautiful?

Sep 22, 2013 - Ram Gopal Varma

A few days back, India in general and Andhra in particular woke up to the news that a Vijayawada girl Nina Davaluri from AP India won the Miss America pageant... I was very happy for her and also happy for whoever likes her kind of beauty... but if you ask me personally I saw a more beautiful girl than Nina Davaluri in Central Mall in Hyderabad yesterday.

The old saying goes that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and rightly so because the quantum of beauty can be only measured in terms of the degree of intensity in a particular individual’s feelings towards a particular woman... and the factors influencing these feelings in men towards women will obviously and vastly vary in different men as per their own individual sensibilities, aesthetics and tastes as in their preferences of slim, voluptuous, dusky, fair etc etc. So the very concept of a handful of people called pageant judges deciding who is the most beautiful woman goes above my head because the term beauty is truly and so vastly subjective. Before those handful of people called judges placed that crown on her head I doubt if anyone would have thought that Nina Davaluri is the most beautiful woman they saw but now that she has been awarded the Miss America title everyone will look at her in a new way. It’s her success in achieving that title which will make her look more beautiful than she actually is.
Also, an interesting thing is that all the people who are celebrating her victory now and screaming with pride of her Indian origin weren’t even bothered to track that an Indian girl is participating in that prestigious pageant. In true Indian fashion, they only discovered her after she won.
Coming back to defining beauty, I personally know at least a hundred girls who have a more beautiful smile than Mona Lisa, I find 9 out of 10 girls walking on the FTV ramps more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe, I find Sridevi in Mr India more enchanting than Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra and I found three other girls who lost out to Nina Davaluri in the pageant more beautiful than Nina Davaluri herself.
Having said all this I hereby want to say three cheers to Nina Davaluri for becoming Miss America because I love both beautiful women and beautiful America precisely in that order.

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