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Sikh Woman Defends Facial Hair After Photo Goes Viral


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Balpreet Kaur, Sikh Woman, Proudly Sports Facial Hair In Accordance With Her Faith

s-SIKH-WOMAN-BEARD-large300.jpg

Warning - Nasty or prepubescent jokes or comments will be reported to the moderators as attempts to provoke and incite.

Please do not post in this thread if you're not grown up enough to not snicker or make fun of the subject of this thread. Thank you.

So, as I am wont to do at times, I was scanning news sites to see what's what out there and I came across this thread about a douchebag who had posted a picture of Balpreet Kaur, a young female Sikh college student. The OP's username is literally 'european_douchebag'. A username he certainly lived up to.

The thread was created in order to laugh at her because she happened to have facial hair. I have to admit in all honestly, at first I had to do a double take. Facial hair on a woman isn't unheard of, i'm lookling at you ladies of Italian descent....you know what I speak of. :P, but it still isn't something that perhaps i'm used to seeing on a daily basis(I don't know how better to state it). However, I also knew that Sikhs, particularly baptized Sikhs, such as Balpreet here, don't cut their hair, as it's a tenet of their faith.

I figured it was just going to be a thread filled with pointing and laughing and all the juvenile crap that one is used to seeing on Reddit......and true to Reddit, there was.

But....

....much to my surprise there was also a post written by Balpreet, identifying herself as the girl in the picture and acknowledging the taunts with a most eloquently remarkable response to the OP, as shown here:

Hey, guys. This is Balpreet Kaur, the girl from the picture. I actually didn't know about this until one of my friends told on facebook. If the OP wanted a picture, they could have just asked and I could have smiled
:)

However, I'm not embarrased or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positve] that this picture is getting because, it's who I am. Yes, I'm a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women. However, baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body - it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. Just as a child doesn't reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us.

By crying 'mine, mine' and changing this body-tool, we are essentially living in ego and creating a seperateness between ourselves and the divinity within us. By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it? When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. So, to me, my face isn't important but the smile and the happiness that lie behind the face are. :-)

So, if anyone sees me at OSU, please come up and say hello. I appreciate all of the comments here, both positive and less positive because I've gotten a better understanding of myself and others from this. Also, the yoga pants are quite comfortable and the Better Together tshirt is actually from Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that focuses on storytelling and engagement between different faiths.
:)

I hope this explains everything a bit more, and I apologize for causing such confusion and uttering anything that hurt anyone.

http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/109cnf/im_not_sure_what_to_conclude_from_this/?sort=new#c6bmnym

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I gotta be honest though. I wouldn't do what she's doing, if I was a girl, but I guess that's just me. What she's doing.. is none of my business. She's not hurting anyone and she can be, feel, dress, act like anyone that she wants to be, especially if it's herself.

Her reaction of the OP taunting was quite a graceful way of handling it, without stooping back on personal attacks (as it is very tempting to do that). Even better was the reply that the european_douchebag guy made which shamed his prior actions/behaviour and has allowed himself to move forward also. Both people deserve quite a bit of respect out of it. I like.

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Different people interpret the same faith differently. The vast majority of Sikhs would say the Sikh faith does not ban women from looking pretty, putting on make up and taking other necessary measures like facial hair removal.

Obviously Balpreet is a strong person. She has some qualities everyone should have. But I feel one must draw the line somewhere.

Some people participate in terror attacks becasue they believe its in their faith to do so, others meditate several hours per day. Others will walk bare feet for hundreds of miles to go pay respect to their gods. Others are like Balpreet. I consider all these people to be extremists. Some peaceful others violent others somewhere in the middle but extreme in the way they read and interpret their holy scriptures.

Nanak the 1st Guru started the Sikh religion 200 years before Gobind the 10 th Guru initiated the practice of keeping unshorn hair. It was due to the political situation of the day. Sikhism had 10 Gurus (teachers). These were men not profits, nor gods. 9 of the 10 Gurus did not say anything about not cutting your hair.

I bet Balpreet cuts her finger nails.

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