Malavika Mohanan Shows A Middle Finger To All That Hairlessness And Serves Up Some Realness. We Need More Women Like Her!

As far as managing beauty standards is concerned, we still have a long way to go. At one end, we are seeing more raw and untouched beauty reaching the masses, while still having big stars peddling beauty creams to us on the side. There is indeed a disconnect in what the younger, more informed, generation wants and what the popular mediums are offering. As millennials, we’d much rather see a lady slay in her truest self, rather than a polished version of what her “brand” is supposed to be. Fortunately, most of our favourite fashion girls are moving to keep it real, from no-makeup selfies to beauty tutorials starting with a bare face…there is no shade being thrown. Guess the trick is to pick your battles right and then go in all guns blazing. And one young starlet is picking up the kind of battle we never thought even existed, before she shed light on it. Malavika Mohanan gave us some very real and very fabulous facial hair moment and we officially have a girl crush on her!

Malavika recently shared an adorable colour-blocked Biljana Tipsarevic dress and we were so charmed by the kind of makeup look she went for!

https://thehauterfly.com/fashion/deepika-padukone-ranveer-singh-fashion/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2eAXB9ADPI/

The South Indian beaut chose to rely on a dramatic eye and ponytail for her outfit, and nothing else! The fact that her makeup artist, Karishma Bajaj, chose to bring out her natural features rather than make corrections needs a round of applause. We are so used to seeing our celebrities flawless and slick in their fashion shots that this untouched picture of Malavika threw us off. Contrary to what our man-child of an ex believes, women do have facial hair. And this facial hair makes many an appearances in our own pictures, unless we use a filter on them. They can also be hidden with a bit of concealer and lighting magic. But on Malavika, we see her edges (baby hair) laid down smooth and very visible for the lens. We have gotten so used to looking at processed pictures like this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2W_r02FmOt/

…or this one…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvNFhiKgt58/

…that when we so see fashion photographs of women being natural, it gets us all flustered. I personally have fallen victim to waxing my face to get a more “cleaner” complexion show up on photographs or in reality. But every women who has ever waxed anything knows this to be true…it is the worst!

To go through hair removal is completely an individual woman’s personal choice! Whether you do it to control excessive growth or don’t because you are naturally hairless (lucky!), to each her own. That is why it is so important to see all kinds of faces in popular portals like Instagram or magazine covers. For women to make an individual choice, they need to feel free to choose anything. With Malavika, we were pleasantly surprised but not completely blindsided. The actress is knows for going bare-faced and apologetically desi quite a lot. The realistic beauty standards of her target audience also allows her to experiment with these looks. But can we say the same about some of our other Bollywood beauties? Unfortunately, not yet!

https://thehauterfly.com/lifestyle/culture/up-bus-stations-to-now-have-breastfeeding-kiosks-for-mothers-still-no-idea-why-women-must-hide-but-its-a-start/