Random Rants From A Mildly Enraged Feminist

So this month just before I sat down to pen down or rather type out my monthly feminist post, I realized that somebody had already written a rather excellent column on the same. While I will come to that in a moment, I thought then that this was a great chance to maybe do a round up of all the things that got my feminist goat (or broccoli for the vegetarians) this past month.

Starting off with politics.

I live in El Salvador at the moment and all the English news channels (Mostly American) have been going to town with the coverage of the Republican and Democratic conventions. There have been reams written about Ann Romney and Michelle Obama, both strong and charismatic women in their own right. And then there were the predictable twitter and other social media backlash about how – “so what if the first lady and the could-be first lady were so informed and educated, the United States of America is yet to have a female President and India has had one, so Haha, In your Face America” and more of the same. 

Here is the excellent article that I was referring to in the introduction. It was written in 2011 and still rings very true. Also contrast it to this article I found on MSN – please note how women politicians are referred to as ‘Fiery Yogis’ and other such wonderful epithets with absolutely nothing about their work on the field.

Thank you whoever wrote and edited this, for absolutely nothing.

Now on to my next peeve of the month- in the past couple of weeks my Facebook feed has been littered with people who have been viewing a certain Bollywood actress’s “wardrobe malfunction”.

Now I understand that these two rather mundane words put together do create the most scandalous of images that will make even the most unconcerned amongst us want to check this out. I confess that I rushed and clicked on the link too. A little part of me judged me that day for even temporarily being the gullible fool that tabloids want us to be. (Also I’m not going to link to the picture, in case that’s why you’re reading!)

It was a picture of the actress, now a new mother, wearing a sari and a blouse which was a bit too tight for her and hence you could, if you squinted, that too through her sari, see the underside of her breast. A bit.

What the tabloids and us who are conditioned to click on links like these! So a new mother who has put on a bit of baby weight decided to wear a blouse from her pre- mother days. How many of us mothers can honestly say we’ve never squeezed into certain old pre-baby favorites even though we’re yet to shed the weight?

Why can’t people just let women be? And stop peering at theirs breasts through their saris?

Just take them off from beneath the scanners and just let them be! Aren’t there enough men walking around without shirts for people to gawk at?

Also can we stop obsessing about the same actress and her baby weight while we are it? The women of our country already have unresolved skin color issues and now here we go adding weight to the mix.

Which also brings me to my next peeve- overweight women designers using skinny models. Why? So I better not believe in that ‘all body types are fabulous’ BS you fed that entertainment reporter, when clearly you are not designing for your own body type.

Oh and for my final gem, dedicated to the random men wanting to connect with me and as I have come to understand pretty much every woman via social media –

I am not your ‘dear’. If you are an aspiring writer wanting me to read your stuff calling me ‘your dear’ is not the way forward. As a fellow blogger looking to ‘connect’ with another, please note that I do not want to be your ‘sweet friend’. Also just no more ‘so beautiful and rare to see beauty with brain heehee’ type comments or so help me I will find you and kick your ass so hard that you will have to think twice before you sit down to type out your marginally sleazy friendship requests to other women.

And now deep breath taken. Ends rant.

Any other fellow mildly enraged feminists are welcome to let loose in the comments section.

Pic credit: Charlie Harvey (Used under a Creative Commons license)

Shweta Ganesh Kumar

Shweta Ganesh Kumar is a Novelist, Award-winning Blogger and Founder-Editor of The Times

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