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Whistling artist Malvika Vazalwar was told, 'Good girls don't whistle', by those who were shocked that a girl would do so. Here's a spoken word poem that was inspired from this.
Whistling artist Malvika Vazalwar was told, ‘Good girls don’t whistle’, by those who were shocked that a girl would do so. Here’s a spoken word poem that was inspired from this.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
I astounded and scandalised people by being able to whistling – I was a girl, and OMG, how could I?!
I believe that every individual story of breakthrough and liberation, and every collective movement across rights; be it for women, the LGBTQIA+ community, the DBA community, the black community, the climate or even animals, follows a pattern.
This pattern is often similar across different situations, and can be broken down into the 4 broad stages given in the quote above:
Bless those who curse you, if they can’t beat you, they’ll join you. Boys or Girls, the principal works just the same. – Good Girls Don’t Whistle?
I have also learnt to see the stages as levels that test our resilience and conviction over those who work to passively or actively block our joy.
It’s essential to know which stage we are at. An internal assessment can guide us to pick or drop our battles, be conservative about our energy, intuitive about the time to be silent and the time to speak up, time to surrender and seek help.
But it’s equally important to understand the psychology of the opponent (in this case, the sexist) we are dealing with for they help us to refine, build and advocate our case in a more integrated manner.
Sometimes they can be controlling because of the lack of control in their own lives, sometimes their intent can be well, but the outcome can be far from good: A well wisher who wishes to protect us but ends up ripping our opportunities, and sanity! And only makes us more dependent.
The closer we are to such people who decide our destiny from their blurred view, the more the access they have to us, the closer we are to finding battlegrounds at home.
Education begins at home but so does unlearning and change. A sexist can be anybody. A sexist can be much closer to home. And this can be tough. But it’s a question of our values. Because they certainly are living their own.
So it’s important to throw light on our story, or we will forever live inauthentically and be seen by the limiting gaze of others. And our inauthenticity is not going to light up this dark world.
Inspired by the unsolicited advice I got – “good girls don’t whistle”. And I am grateful for the shock, and then the passion it triggered in me.
First published here.
Instagram & Twitter: @malvikavazalwar Poet & Writer. Published in The Elephant Journal, The Rebelle Society, Thrive Global, The Quint, Youth Ki Awaaz, Feminism In India, among others. A CELTA graduate and a Climate Reality, World's Largest 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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