Going by Wattpad novels, the definition of beauty is a very narrow thing. All heroes must have smoldering eyes, sharp cheekbones, defined abdominal muscles and wear three-piece suits day and night in order to be deemed attractive. They must have serious emotional and anger management issues and be a CEO of some company that is barely ever alluded to. In essence, they must all be Christian Blue, Lavender or Black.
The same thing goes with girls. We have all these characters describing themselves as ugly when they have waist-length blond hair and green eyes, microscopic waists and long legs. Is it possible to be ugly while possessing all of those attributes? Most definitely. But it's unlikely.
It doesn't bother me that writers here consider blonde girls with tiny waists or tall, dark and handsome guys as appealing. It bothers me that every other kind of person is overlooked in most of the books. Our world consists of about two hundred countries, and we have a beautiful spectrum of skin colors within the eight billion of our population. Why always go with white?
For those of you that think racism doesn't exist... It does. Sydney Robbin is a pseudonym, as I've mentioned before. I'm not white, and I've encountered racism before. You'd be surprised how much people notice your skin color in some countries, including my own. You see the occasional commercial for a fairness cream on TV or that a 'dusky' complexion is unattractive. Out west Americans are shelling out the big bucks for natural-looking tans and bronzers, while we want to deprive ourselves of Vitamin D indefinitely.
Guys, Beyonce is one of the most beautiful people alive. She's not white. Neither are Halle Berry, Salma Hayek, Zoe Saldana, Devon Aoki, or a hundred other names. Padma Laxmi isn't white. The thing is, the writers seem to be fixated on a certain group of Caucasians too. What ever happened to those beautiful carrot-haired girls with freckles? Freckles are cute. What's happened to the girls that are so blonde their hair is almost white? No, no, even those girls are hardly ever the heroines of Wattpad stories. It's just the blondes and brunettes and the redheads without freckles that people find attractive. No one else will do. If that was the case, the human race's population would be declining very rapidly, my friends.
I know that people might say that I'm being a hypocrite because so far every story I've written seems to have Caucasian main characters. True, but I'm working on several where the MCs aren't white. Also, Aryan from Red As Blood, I imagine him looking Egyptian more than anything.
All I'm saying is, almost all the girls are white. I understand that it's really easy to slip into that whole concept of 'self-inserting'. I like romantic comedies, I like stories with pretty characters that have sparks. I don't mind reading fluff. Fluff is what you read when War and Peace puts you to sleep.
I'm just saying, diversify the fluff. Why can't we have more interracial love stories? Eleanor and Park, anyone? Because stories have the power to change a person's perspective. I basically live in a country of homophobes, yet I'm not one. Why? I think it's because I have read stories and books of what gay people go through. Real stories where gays are shown as who they are, not what society perceives them to be. They are individuals that crave love just like any other human being, and all of us need to understand that. They are not a popular girl's best friend. They are not there to provide sassy commentary and make edgy fashion choices. They are people, and that is how they should be written.
That reminds me, we don't have enough same-sex love stories on Wattpad. You may argue that we do, because Larry Stylinson or whatever. That is not a same-sex love story. That is the desperate dreaming of a pre-pubescent mind.
Love between two people is beautiful, and it's not made any less because the less is between two girls or two guys or a guy and a girl. Maybe it's time we opened up our eyes to that.
We need more people of different sizes. Beauty comes in all sizes, however cliché that sounds. There was this story I read a couple of years ago, called Anna and the French Kiss. The hero was named Etienne (which is a beautiful name) and was an inch shorter than the heroine. That didn't stop them from falling for each other. In Eleanor and Park, the description of Eleanor is plain at best and pudgy at worst. Yet still Park falls in love with her. He's not exactly a stud-bucket either, but it goes to show. Love isn't restricted to the insanely attractive.
I know my rants don't have a focus or a point. I just want to say that we shouldn't restrict our ideals of beauty to such a narrow range. Almost everyone can beautiful if you see in the right light. A story can make anyone seem beautiful, and what is beauty anyway? It might be the most deceitful thing in the world if the person is rotten at their core.
Peace out,
Syd.
