Conventional Beauty And Amy Winehouse

For those of you who live under a rock like me, here’s a little something about the amazing woman whose picture I tried to recreate for my college magazine in 2019.

Courtesy Wikipedia: Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer and songwriter. Some of her best works were Rehab, Back to Black, Love is a Losing Game, Stronger Than Me etc. Having bagged 23 awards in the 14 years of her career, she is known for her deep voice and the mixing of various genres of music like soul, jazz and rhythms and blues.

I obviously don’t know that much about her as is evident. Having known only her name and her famous look, she wasn’t the first celebrity I thought of when given the liberty to choose for myself. However, as I was sifting through the various celebrities I could possibly pull off (I almost considered Mariah Carey and Rachel McAdams), unable to zero in on one, I was given the option of recreating Amy. (We’re on first name basis here.)

My first thought was, ‘HELL TO THE NO!’

I’m the kind of person whose world revolves only around a good lipstick for makeup and not much else (Atleast in the recent past.) My relationship with makeup is the absolute worst and there I was being told to consider a woman who caked her face with makeup and her eyeliner (My worst enemy) was drawn to the ends of the world. Her hair was a big ball of fuzz and although I’m notorious for “rocking” a big head of unkempt hair more often than is acceptable, I didn’t want to think I could embody her. I didn’t want to embody her. I didn’t want to think I could look like her. (Unhealthy thinking, exhibit A)

But, of course I did. Why else would you be reading this then, right?

As I looked at more pictures of her, trying to find everything the matter with this idea and convince a few that I was really not the right person for this, I saw more and more how I could pull off what was going to be one of my best looks EVER! I saw more and more of how she and I could totally hit it! I’m not saying that I was liking the fact that I was warming up to the idea.

It took me close to an hour of looking at her pictures to realize that she was “not the conventional beauty”.

My damn nerve. Who the hell did I think I was?

I mean, WHO IS THE CONVENTIONAL BEAUTY? Whose face was I going to put for the term ‘conventional beauty’? I could think of a few mind blowing-ly beautiful women that I know or have seen but each of those faces are different from the other and they all don’t fit in one box or even under a derogatory term like ‘conventional beauty’.

Amy Winehouse was beautiful, albeit the makeup was a little extra for me personally but nevertheless, that woman was beautiful. She had the courage to be the exact way she wanted and if that doesn’t shout A-M-A-Z-I-N-G, I don’t know what does. Plus, beauty has always gone hand in hand with confidence and you need a big tub of that to walk out into this judgmental world being whatever the hell you want to be and drawing your liner however thick you want to draw it on.

I was against the idea initially because according to me, she never fit into the category of conventional beauty and if I so much as came close to looking like her, I’d be putting myself out of that same category. That was a sure hit to the way I’d look at myself because of the way I looked at someone else.

And that, my children, is unhealthy thinking at it’s best. Exhibit B.

I’ve thrown around the term ‘conventional beauty’ like as if it was something and only just realized that that is another form of unhealthy thinking. Exhibit C.

If you are like I was, having an idea of ‘conventional beauty’ and thinking someone doesn’t fit that, I suggest you rid yourself of such thinking. I’ve learnt that this is just one way of putting down our own gender and it’s not cool. And in some ways, it’s one way of putting down our own selves like as if we didn’t already have other things contributing to that.

Before I can get into a full fledged rant about something I myself am guilty of, here’s how I went from Anya Abraham to Amy Winehouse. So frickin’ proud of my photographer who usually has no idea how to click me but still killed this one.

Did I kill it or did I kill it? I’ll let you decide that one.

As always, thanks for reading 🙂