my issue with what they consider beautiful is

 their concept of beauty

centres around excluding people

i find hair beautiful

when a woman wears it

like a garden on her skin

that is the definition of beauty

big hooked noses

pointing upwards to the sky

like they’re rising

to the occasion

skin the colour of earth

my ancestors planted crops on

to feed a lineage of women with

thighs thick as tree trunks

eyes like almonds

deeply hooded with conviction

the rivers of panjab

flow through my bloodstream

so don’t tell me my women

aren’t as beautiful

as the ones

in your country.

Poem by the incredible Rupi Kaur. Image- Photograph of mother and daughter by Grete Kolliner, 1931, via vintageindianclothing.tumblr.com.