Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
08 February, 2013
Of gendered tales
An article of mine, titled The Barbification of India has recently been published on Womensweb. What is it about?
For the past couple of years, my daughter has been struggling a lot with this business of what’s cool and what’s not, as far as my daughter’s peers are concerned: it had been proclaimed cool to be in the know about the latest movies, television programmes, Bollywood actors, pop singers, pop teen idols and Gangnam style - not necessarily in that order - along with sporting those Hannah Montana tees and neon tights. One child actually had a beach scene complete with figures lolling around in bikinis in as cake decoration in a beach themed party for her birthday. One can imagine the messages being given to these children. Yes, they are children at 11-12 years, never mind the self-possession and worldly airs. By these standards, my book-loving child, who has more sober tastes in music, clothes and everything else, who does not consider dancing to 'Sheila ki Jawani' as particularly desirable and who does reasonably well at academics is labelled uncool, a nerd!
These are the same peers whose idols were Barbie and the Disney Princesses not so long ago. Barbie might have been originally a teen icon for feminists at a time (the late 50s) when most women were not expected to step out of the home for a career, but over time it has evolved into a feminist’s worst nightmares. For one, the demographics have changed from teens to pre-teens; sometimes even younger. With her impossibly top-heavy figure (if extrapolated to adult female size, the measurements of 36-18-38 are near impossible in real life), long slim legs and vacuous sexuality, Barbie sends a skewed body image message to girls who buy into the unhealthy eating patterns that this propagates. A friend’s 7 year old refuses to eat fruits because her peers say they will make her fat.
To top it all, most Barbies come with accessories, clothes and domestic items in pepto-bismol shades of pink and purple that has spawned an entire parallel range of girls’ merchandise in similar colours complete with glitter and bling. Since the past few years, Barbie is available in India in an Indian avatar, complete with traditional Indian costumes, families, and the 'great Indian Culture'.
Most of these problems are shared by the Disney Princesses. A brain-child of Disney’s marketing executive Andy Mooney at the beginning of this century, it was a masterstroke of franchise that spawned a multimillion-dollar industry in dolls, clothes, accessories and other merchandise, a model that manufacturers for children have repeated over and over again with many other popular fictional characters. Considering the cool quotient of the movies, television shows and such, this was a shrewd business move.
Pink for girls and blue for boys! This polarisation by gender ensures double the sales for companies with vested interests. Younger children playing with toys originally targeted towards an older group has also created a demand for clothes unsuitable for that age. As utbtkids, a fellow blogger puts it, “if you are looking for non-pink, non-Disney characters, slightly loose, appropriate clothing, something that will withstand the running and climbing, and something that is not a mini version of adult clothing you might as well grow your own cotton and weave your own clothes.” Boys, too, suffer due to these brand and franchise excesses. A neighbour refuses to let her one year old son associate with anything even remotely considered feminine, in his clothes or choice of toys. Everything has to be only in shades of ‘manly’ colours, and aggressively in the realm of the ‘boyish’!
Most people see nothing wrong with girls playing ‘house’ with dolls, dressing up, having idols that promote domestication along with a sexualised self-image, and boys, at the other end of the spectrum, being encouraged to be sporty, playing ‘out there’, indulging in large motor activities geared towards being powerful. It is perceived as perfectly natural. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Children’s play always reinforces cultural messages, as they learn patterns of behaviour through it. Peggy Orenstein, social psychologist and author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, puts it wonderfully well: “At issue, then, is not nature or nurture but how nurture becomes nature: the environment in which children play and grow can encourage a range of aptitudes or foreclose them. So blithely indulging — let alone exploiting — stereotypically gendered play patterns may have a more negative long-term impact on kids’ potential than parents imagine.”
************************************************
Also check out my review of the first part of Amruta Patil's retelling of the Mahabharat: Adi Parva, a feminist view, also on Womensweb. A wonderful book.
16 November, 2012
A right to her own self
She is born a woman.
When will her birth be celebrated without any reservations?
Will she ever be able to decide for herself?
Will she ever be free to walk out on the streets without strategizing:
Should I go?
Need I go?
Am I dressed right?
Will I be considered respectable enough?
Is the time OK to go out?
Is it safe for me to be out?
Which way will be safe?
How fast do I need to go to reach a safe place?
When will she be taken seriously?
Will the world ever realize that a no means a NO?
Will she ever be able to universally claim her right to an education?
Will she ever be able to express her thoughts and feelings without worrying about being ridiculed for it or about who might get angry over it?
Will she ever be able to live to her full potential without having to dumb down to conform to others' expectations of her?
Will she ever be able to be true to herself without being apologetic or being made to feel guilty about wanting to be herself?
Will she ever be able to see herself as a human being first, without the epithets of mother, daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, granddaughter, nurturer, care-taker, house-keeper, cook, whore, entertainer? Will the world ever be able to?
Will she be able to perceive her self through filters other than those of fair, dark, fat, thin, short, tall, beautiful, ugly, black, white, yellow, brown? Will the world ever be able to?
Will she ever be considered a human being, with human wants, wishes, feelings, failings, without the halo or stain?
Will she ever be considered more than a means to an end- getting a male heir? More than a womb whose job it is to cater to the propogation of the (ironically) human race?
Will she ever be able to reclaim her right to her body, her thoughts, her feelings, her wishes, her life?
Will she ever be able to live a happy and fulfilling life on her own terms without everyone and their cousin attempting to control her choices?
Will her life be ever considered more important than any ideology?
31 year old Savita Halappanavar died a painful and unnecessary death in Ireland after being denied proper medical care. Her story is known to all by now. Her baby had already miscarried, and she was dealing with the heartbreak in a practical way- asking for a termination of the pregnancy as her life was in danger. She died a long and protracted, extremely painful death. An entirely preventable death. An immeasurable loss for her family- her parents and her husband. What kind of upholding of religion did this achieve? She did not even share that belief.
Both Praveen and Savita Halappanavar lost their baby. Only Savita lost her life.
She was born a woman.
Is this the kind of world into which I've brought my daughter?
I couldn't put my wish and hope for a better world for our daughters in words any different from these by a favourite poet, Rabindranath Tagore-
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
Poetry, as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago.
RIP, Savita Halappanavar.
***************************************************
This was a post hankering to be written. Savita's story was just the catalyst.
When will her birth be celebrated without any reservations?
Will she ever be able to decide for herself?
Will she ever be free to walk out on the streets without strategizing:
Should I go?
Need I go?
Am I dressed right?
Will I be considered respectable enough?
Is the time OK to go out?
Is it safe for me to be out?
Which way will be safe?
How fast do I need to go to reach a safe place?
When will she be taken seriously?
Will the world ever realize that a no means a NO?
Will she ever be able to universally claim her right to an education?
Will she ever be able to express her thoughts and feelings without worrying about being ridiculed for it or about who might get angry over it?
Will she ever be able to live to her full potential without having to dumb down to conform to others' expectations of her?
Will she ever be able to be true to herself without being apologetic or being made to feel guilty about wanting to be herself?
Will she ever be able to see herself as a human being first, without the epithets of mother, daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, granddaughter, nurturer, care-taker, house-keeper, cook, whore, entertainer? Will the world ever be able to?
Will she be able to perceive her self through filters other than those of fair, dark, fat, thin, short, tall, beautiful, ugly, black, white, yellow, brown? Will the world ever be able to?
Will she ever be considered a human being, with human wants, wishes, feelings, failings, without the halo or stain?
Will she ever be considered more than a means to an end- getting a male heir? More than a womb whose job it is to cater to the propogation of the (ironically) human race?
Will she ever be able to reclaim her right to her body, her thoughts, her feelings, her wishes, her life?
Will she ever be able to live a happy and fulfilling life on her own terms without everyone and their cousin attempting to control her choices?
Will her life be ever considered more important than any ideology?
31 year old Savita Halappanavar died a painful and unnecessary death in Ireland after being denied proper medical care. Her story is known to all by now. Her baby had already miscarried, and she was dealing with the heartbreak in a practical way- asking for a termination of the pregnancy as her life was in danger. She died a long and protracted, extremely painful death. An entirely preventable death. An immeasurable loss for her family- her parents and her husband. What kind of upholding of religion did this achieve? She did not even share that belief.
Both Praveen and Savita Halappanavar lost their baby. Only Savita lost her life.
She was born a woman.
Is this the kind of world into which I've brought my daughter?
I couldn't put my wish and hope for a better world for our daughters in words any different from these by a favourite poet, Rabindranath Tagore-
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
Poetry, as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago.
RIP, Savita Halappanavar.
***************************************************
This was a post hankering to be written. Savita's story was just the catalyst.
15 August, 2012
One more prize...
...won for an article on Womensweb. This was for their Friendship Story writing theme.
*gleefully browsing flipkart for a book to spend the Rs 200 gift voucher on*
Here's the article in full.
She did not have any friends who stayed near her house. Not a single school friend, nor anyone near her age, or sharing her interests. There were just her younger brothers, who according to her, were brats not to be seen around with.
At least, there were the cousins, who stayed a few buildings away. Something was better than nothing, so she decided they’d do, to hang around with. The cousins had a neighbour, an only child. This girl, a few years younger, latched herself onto her, becoming the proverbial Mary’s lamb!
They had nothing in common, not even their interests, but something clicked. Over the years, as the two girls grew up, the reasons for hanging out with the cousins dwindled, and those for spending evenings with the younger girl increased. They became a twosome and shunted the cousins out.
As the two friends grew up into adulthood, the natural gap of 7-odd years between them began to close. They were women, with totally different destinies, totally different career trajectories, but with complete understanding of each other’s minds. Life happened, and they lived in widely separated places, different time zones, even.
They were as different as chalk and cheese in their family lives as well, which could not have intersected at any points except the one which they both overlapped at. Their husbands never met each other, not by design, but just by chance. They each knew their wife’s friend well though, and each was always welcome to the other’s home.
Over two decades, they met maybe once or twice a year, but every time they met, it was as if they had never been apart. Each intuitively knew if the other was in any kind of trouble or difficulty, and it would be an eerie coincidence that they would try to contact each other just when a friend was needed.
Despite never being able to attend the major events in each other’s lives, they have been able to remain clued in to each other’s triumphs and troubles. If needed, one just has to reach out to find the other right there.
I am the older girl of the two, and this is the story of my friend M and me. A friendship between two completely dissimilar personalities, which has simply endured on love, loyalty, trust and understanding – through thick and thin.
*gleefully browsing flipkart for a book to spend the Rs 200 gift voucher on*
Here's the article in full.
She did not have any friends who stayed near her house. Not a single school friend, nor anyone near her age, or sharing her interests. There were just her younger brothers, who according to her, were brats not to be seen around with.
At least, there were the cousins, who stayed a few buildings away. Something was better than nothing, so she decided they’d do, to hang around with. The cousins had a neighbour, an only child. This girl, a few years younger, latched herself onto her, becoming the proverbial Mary’s lamb!
They had nothing in common, not even their interests, but something clicked. Over the years, as the two girls grew up, the reasons for hanging out with the cousins dwindled, and those for spending evenings with the younger girl increased. They became a twosome and shunted the cousins out.
As the two friends grew up into adulthood, the natural gap of 7-odd years between them began to close. They were women, with totally different destinies, totally different career trajectories, but with complete understanding of each other’s minds. Life happened, and they lived in widely separated places, different time zones, even.
They were as different as chalk and cheese in their family lives as well, which could not have intersected at any points except the one which they both overlapped at. Their husbands never met each other, not by design, but just by chance. They each knew their wife’s friend well though, and each was always welcome to the other’s home.
Over two decades, they met maybe once or twice a year, but every time they met, it was as if they had never been apart. Each intuitively knew if the other was in any kind of trouble or difficulty, and it would be an eerie coincidence that they would try to contact each other just when a friend was needed.
Despite never being able to attend the major events in each other’s lives, they have been able to remain clued in to each other’s triumphs and troubles. If needed, one just has to reach out to find the other right there.
I am the older girl of the two, and this is the story of my friend M and me. A friendship between two completely dissimilar personalities, which has simply endured on love, loyalty, trust and understanding – through thick and thin.
08 March, 2012
Book Review: The Agenda of the Apprentice Scientist
Today is World Science Day and World Read-aloud Day, and yesterday was World Math Day. 2012 has been declared the National Mathematics Year in honour of the 125th anniversary of Ramanujan's birth. Today is also International Women's Day.
What better than to celebrate it with a book originally written by a woman physicist of some note, translated from the French into English by another woman? A book that encompasses all branches of science, as well as math.
Being in a montessori environment at school upto grade 3 meant that hands-on experience played a major part in my daughter's learning at school. Even now, in middle school, she prefers to be explained things through experiment. Quite often, when she is not quite convinced about a concept taught in the more by-rote manner, I found that it helps to get down to the hands-on method. So when I found this book, I knew it was just the right one for her.
The Agenda of the Apprentice Scientist
Written by Nicole Ostrowsky
Illustrated by Theresa Bronn
Translated from French by Radhika Viswanathan with Gillian Rosner
Published by Universities Press
Ages 7-70 (as it says in a foreword by none other than CNR Rao.)
As parents, we come across this experience almost daily- whether in the sphere of academics or otherwise- our children ask us something, and sometimes (OK, a lot of times) it is something that we may not be very sure of ourselves. When I am faced with such a situation, I often try to explain it to her, regardless, but smart cookie that she is, she sees through the attempt. Then I have to admit I need to learn more about / think through about the topic at hand, before I can explain it to her to her satisfaction.
So the acid test of whether one has understood something or not is if one can explain something to a child in clear, simple terms. That is just what this book, written by French physicist Dr Nicole Ostrowsky, who believes in a hands-on approach to education, is about.
There is one new idea / question / problem to ponder on for each day of the year, so we are introduced to 365 concepts, some known, some unknown. All fun to work on. The experiments involve easy-to-obtain-at-home articles, and some days it is just an observation that needs pondering on.
Of course, true to her interest in the field, Dr Ostrowsky deals more with physics here, with quite a bit of spillover into mathematics and the other basic sciences. Each day's topic eases into the next days at many places, with a whole spectrum of ideas discussed over many days.
An example - the topic of temperature and thermodynamics with these headings:
Aug 18: Are you a good thermometer?
Aug 19: Let's start again!
Aug 20: Step outside your house at night.
Aug 21: Does a dog need a coat?
Aug 22: Fast freeze and slow freeze.
Aug 23: Freeze- the old fashioned way.
Aug 24: Gabriel (Fahrenheit) made some funny choices.
Aug 25: Let's simplify.
Aug 26: Blow hot and cold.
Aug 27: Why do we blow on our soup to cool it down?
Aug 28: How do you dry your hair?
Aug 29: Look at the mirror in your bathroom after a hot shower.
Aug 30: Where does rain come from?
Aug 31: Evaporation+condensation=distillation.
All this with many more questions, and very clear explanations as footnotes.
My favourite features, the quirky illustrations and the relevant quotes on each page! On the Aug 24 page-look above- there is a quote by Jean Loup Chiflet-"It was so hot that the thermometer read: see the next column!"
Book cover image courtesy flipkart, Dr Nicole Ostrowsky's photograph courtesy blog.hippocampus.in.
Crossposted at Saffrontree.
What better than to celebrate it with a book originally written by a woman physicist of some note, translated from the French into English by another woman? A book that encompasses all branches of science, as well as math.
Being in a montessori environment at school upto grade 3 meant that hands-on experience played a major part in my daughter's learning at school. Even now, in middle school, she prefers to be explained things through experiment. Quite often, when she is not quite convinced about a concept taught in the more by-rote manner, I found that it helps to get down to the hands-on method. So when I found this book, I knew it was just the right one for her.
Written by Nicole Ostrowsky
Illustrated by Theresa Bronn
Translated from French by Radhika Viswanathan with Gillian Rosner
Published by Universities Press
Ages 7-70 (as it says in a foreword by none other than CNR Rao.)
As parents, we come across this experience almost daily- whether in the sphere of academics or otherwise- our children ask us something, and sometimes (OK, a lot of times) it is something that we may not be very sure of ourselves. When I am faced with such a situation, I often try to explain it to her, regardless, but smart cookie that she is, she sees through the attempt. Then I have to admit I need to learn more about / think through about the topic at hand, before I can explain it to her to her satisfaction.
 |
| Dr Nicole Ostrowsky, former head of Laboratory of Physics and Condensed Matter, University of Nice, Current Professor Emeritus |
There is one new idea / question / problem to ponder on for each day of the year, so we are introduced to 365 concepts, some known, some unknown. All fun to work on. The experiments involve easy-to-obtain-at-home articles, and some days it is just an observation that needs pondering on.
Of course, true to her interest in the field, Dr Ostrowsky deals more with physics here, with quite a bit of spillover into mathematics and the other basic sciences. Each day's topic eases into the next days at many places, with a whole spectrum of ideas discussed over many days.
An example - the topic of temperature and thermodynamics with these headings:
Aug 18: Are you a good thermometer?
Aug 19: Let's start again!
Aug 20: Step outside your house at night.
Aug 21: Does a dog need a coat?
Aug 22: Fast freeze and slow freeze.
Aug 23: Freeze- the old fashioned way.
Aug 24: Gabriel (Fahrenheit) made some funny choices.
Aug 25: Let's simplify.
Aug 26: Blow hot and cold.
Aug 27: Why do we blow on our soup to cool it down?
Aug 28: How do you dry your hair?
Aug 29: Look at the mirror in your bathroom after a hot shower.
Aug 30: Where does rain come from?
Aug 31: Evaporation+condensation=distillation.
All this with many more questions, and very clear explanations as footnotes.
My favourite features, the quirky illustrations and the relevant quotes on each page! On the Aug 24 page-look above- there is a quote by Jean Loup Chiflet-"It was so hot that the thermometer read: see the next column!"
Book cover image courtesy flipkart, Dr Nicole Ostrowsky's photograph courtesy blog.hippocampus.in.
Crossposted at Saffrontree.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)