We’ve come a long way from when people would debate the topic of arranged marriage vs. love marriage in India - don’t get me wrong, the debate is still on but there is a wider acceptance of both the schools of thought amongst the larger public. In fact, there is also a hybrid love-cum-arranged marriage that seems to be the sweet spot within Indian society.
Where a lot of parents and older generations are open to their children opting for love marriages, a lot of young individuals also find the concept of arranged marriage appealing as it makes their life easier when it comes to filtering out potential matches. However, even though there is an acceptance of the two schools of thought, and many young individuals are open to going through the process of arranged marriages - somewhere along the process, many women find themselves stripped off their self-confidence. What seemed like a great way to find a suitable match with minimal effort turns out to be a horrific experience for many women, amplifying their insecurities (if not giving rise to new ones), especially with regards to their physical appearance.
Many-a-times arranged marriages are transactional in nature and due to this people are evaluated on a list of criteria, one of them being their physical appearance. As per the criteria basis which people are evaluated in arranged marriage systems, like mainstream beauty standards, the perfect appearance lies in the intersection of being tall (but not too tall for women), fair, and thin (not too thin, not fat) as depicted in the illustration below.
P.S. The three factors considered are the most common factors/considerations and reasons for rejection in arranged marriages. However, the process is highly complex and many other factors could be deciding factors thus these are in no way set in stone. Additionally, even though this diagram is made to explain the issue at hand, in no way would I say it is accurate in highlighting nuances and complexities of the factors and considerations. There are many permutations and combinations considered keeping in mind these factors and the different scales and degrees to which they play out. We can't possibly be so objective about the body and shouldn't be as well- it’s not so binary after all. The diagram is just a very basic representation of the topic I am illustrating through this article.
If one is “lucky” enough to check all the boxes then the process seems straightforward and the girl is often matched with less difficulty as far as physical appearance is concerned. However, this seems to be very unlikely with most people. If one “falls short” as per the arranged marriage industry standards then either the other side is “compromising” and the girl is expected to make up for it in other ways or by being good at other things, OR she faces rejection and often ends up feeling not so great about herself. It seems like this is when many women decide to quit the process of finding a suitable partner through the arranged system or they simply take a break to rebuild their lost self-esteem for another round of the same, hoping that this time around it’ll work out.
Out of curiosity, I spoke to a few people going through the arranged marriage process to find that almost all of them had faced situations where they were rejected or at least their appearance was brought up in conversation while deciding their suitability as a match from the “other side”.This piece highlights a few stories and key reasons why many women face rejection or are not the perfect candidates for arranged marriages based on their appearance. For the sake of anonymity, the excerpts of my conversations with these women are generalised in the following part of the article.
“Choti” – The short girl
“I’ve been meeting boys for the last two years and honestly I thought going through arranged marriage would be a lot easier to find a match. People have always commented about my skin colour and how my fair skin would make it easy for me to find a suitable match, however, as I started facing rejections because of my height I began to actually be bothered about how short I am. I mean factually, I’ve always known I am short but it was never a topic of concern for me - having grown up on rom-coms I always believed that the short girl gets the tall guy and almost felt lucky for being short. Nonetheless, the arranged marriage process can be brutal - I still remember the first time I heard that my height was the reason I was rejected. I laughed it off thinking the other family had some “weird” idea of arranged marriage only to realise that I was the one who probably didn’t see arranged marriage for what it was. As the number of rejections went up so did my anxiety and insecurity about my height. I’ve started wearing clothes that make me look taller, taken to heels over flats and have let myself get bogged down because as I’ve heard multiple times now, “itni choti ladki se kaun shaadi karna chahega”.
“Kaali” – The dark girl
“Being darker than the average wheatish complexion I’ve always been reminded of how I need to take extra care of my skin (avoid the sun, try all sorts of fairness treatments and creams, etc) and work on my complexion to get better proposals- actually not just get better proposals but just to be “prettier”. As I was nearing my late twenties, my grandmother and mother started nudging me towards using fairness products, trying homemade face masks and remedies to “improve” my complexion i.e. make me fairer. I didn’t really think much of it and thought it was all harmless to give in to their suggestions, and having already internalised that my complexion was not beautiful by social standards (since my complexion was always pointed out negatively since I was a kid), I thought why not? Little did I know the extent to which I would be humiliated and made to feel bad about myself because of my complexion, especially in times when “dark can be beautiful too!”. I remember from all the times I was rejected or had to face comments with regards to my complexion in the arranged marriage process, there was this one instance that really made me feel very bad about myself and the system. My grandmother had sent someone a photo for a rishta and the boy’s mother thought that I looked dark in my image but she just wanted to make sure she’s got my “shade” right, before she or her son even met me :O She asked my grandmom to send me outside the house walking so she could come and “check me out” without me noticing or her having to interact with me - this is when I decided that I was done with the arranged marriage process. I didn’t want to be put on display for others to judge me based on my complexion and then reject me because I’m dark. It’s great to be tall, DARK and handsome for men but if a woman is dark then she is not worthy or pure or whatever they might think “lekin unko kya pata hum kaale hai toh kya hua dilwale hai ;)”
“Moti” – The chubby or fat girl
“No prizes for guessing that if you’re fat you’ve probably been fat-shamed in more than one way all through your life. The diets, endless crunches, infinite swimming laps that we make our body go through because of the feeling of being insufficient and undesirable are ridiculous - but when the world and people around us constantly remind us that fat is not the way we are “supposed” to be to be attractive it starts eating us from within. I’ve tried losing weight all my life and with constant weight fluctuations, I’ve developed a thick skin to remarks and comments about my weight. However, it’s been three years since I’ve been trying to find someone special through the arranged marriage process and WOW what a beating I’ve taken to my self-confidence. I feel miserable about myself and my weight - I was hopeful that someone would see me for me but I guess they can't see beyond my weight, maybe the layer of fat is just too thick for them to see through :p I’ve got everything from an outright “yeh bahut moti hai” to “theek hai lekin agar patli hoti toh zyada sundar lagti” to “oh yeh toh badi healthy hai” - but what felt the worse was not these random people I don’t know making comments and tagging me as unworthy for their children but my own family members telling me how if I don’t lose weight I might have to compromise - I get it that’s the harsh reality within the arranged marriage space and I seem to have bought into it trying extremely hard to lose weight but I wish there were another way.”
The experiences of the women I spoke to illustrate some of the issues faced by women as they navigate the complexities of the arranged marriage system. It isn't as straightforward as it seems, skin colour and size are key considerations but there are a lot of other things that are factored in like facial features that could change people’s perspective. There are also different permutations and combinations of how many boxes one checks- one might be fair but short and fat or someone might be tall but too dark. I have illustrated some of these combinations below to put across a basic idea of the social lens through which women are evaluated.
Depending on the scale of where you lie with regards to these factors and the number of factors that meet or don't meet the beauty standards almost decide your worth in a way.
The short experiences highlighted above are just a few of the large gamut of difficulties faced by women with regards to their physical appearance in the arranged marriage system. A system that is meant to find you a life partner or someone to love you for who you are, often leaves many women feeling even more insecure and anxious.
Nonetheless, now, more than ever, women are trying to embark on a journey of self-love to find ways to love themselves again and reclaim themselves from what social judgements have made of them. It is going to be a long struggle - but as one of the women rightly said “I’m glad I got rejected by someone with that narrow mindset or someone who made me look at myself with the lens of that mindset”.