Beautiful women always have it easy. Well, that is what most of us think. A beautiful woman may also find those doors firmly and resolutely shut. For truth be told, beauty is not always the kind of password to success and a woman with drop dead gorgeous looks-unless she is in showbiz-may actually find the going tough because of the tide of envy and hostility she provokes and when it is politics, beauty is often a liability than an asset. For instance Brinda Karat, the beauteous CPM member has taken long years to ascend to her party’s highest body. But even now she is a relative political welterweight amidst such heavyweight women politicians as Mamata Banerjee, or Mayawati, or Sushma Swaraj.

In the hurly burly of Indian politics, nothing succeeds like excess, and these women make it a point to be as dramatic and strident as possible. Karat too has been trying hard to get ahead in the stridency stakes but despite these rabble-rousing tactics, maybe her sophisticated looks continue to be a sticking point. Interestingly, Hillary Clinton recently refused to appear on the cover of Vogue for fear that she would look too feminine. Her decision led Vogue editor Anna Wintour to write frostily, “The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying.” While as a woman, she can’t afford to appear too masculine but looking too feminine could also scupper her chances when she is trying to blast into the biggest male bastion of all-the US presidency.

Take tennis star Sania Mirza, for instance. Had her face not been as fetching as her forehand, it’s unlikely that she would have been   targeted quit viciously for this or that religious or moral infringement. Had she hidden her sexiness behind loose shirts and longer skirts, and played down her oomph, chances are that people would have concentrated more on her game.

Hostility apart-men too may turn against a beautiful woman if she is an able competitor and is unlikely to grant sexual favors which is an ugly prejudice that many good looking women have to contend with is that beauty doesn’t go with brains. Remember Mandira  Bedi, when she stepped out of the tinsel world of TV serials and appeared on a cricket show, which was hitherto Men’s-only club, she was immediately dubbed a bimbo. Even now, she says, when she does corporate events, people explain things to her in tremendous detail as though she was a target to   quit.

Have you ever wondered why is the combination of beauty and brains such a lethal cocktail that the former needs to be toned down to make sure that the latter isn’t ignored? It’s ironical that beauty should have the power to evoke such negative vibes when there’s a whole flourishing beauty industry out there feeding off women’s endless quest to achieve it. At the end it is the inner beauty of you that makes you a beautiful person.