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We all have set ideas about how people should look and behave. Here's a note about why this author does not look foreign-returned and how it empowers her.
We all have set ideas about how people should look and behave. Here’s a note about why this author does not look foreign-returned and how it empowers her.
I am writing this, somewhere around the same time as the video for Vogue empower series, featuring Deepika Padukone, is finding its share of critics and admirers; more critics than admirers at least from the reactions I have witnessed in the cyberworld. As for me, except for some questionable ideas, I don’t in particularly think the video is as ‘silly’ and ‘fake’ as lot of men and women have found it to be, and I definitely don’t have a problem with Deepika Padukone being its face.
After all, we live in a country where Amitabh Bachchan had been the good-old ambassador for polio eradication, and Vidya Balan in a multitude of well-meaning get-ups has been preaching the importance of having a ‘shouchalaya‘ inside one’s house. All forms of empowerment, in their own ways, make use of popular and well-regarded celebrities. Why then should Ms Padukone be targeted for doing her own ‘bit’? But, this piece is not about the video or Ms Padukone. This is not about feminism, or an attempt to say that women are inherently superior creatures than men. None of that. This is only about that one aspect of the word that makes up the title of the video, the word ‘choice’, and the other big word ’empower’.
I did not feel the need to become a different person just because I happened to live in a different geography for a while.
The ones that are more disturbing are the ones where people give me a “Oh-darling-I-can-see-that-you-are-lying-I-mean-look-at-you-haa-haa-who-are-you-kidding-stayed-in-US-it-seems” look.
Clearly people, I’d like to think I am empowered enough to make my kind of choices.
Writer and technologist currently based out of Bangalore read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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