Femme Fatale

“OMG! You don’t look like a Mom at all!’

‘You look so fresh! Who will say you are a mother of two?’

‘You look as beautiful as a college girl!’

How many of you have come across these comments? I deliberately chose the term ‘comments’ and not ‘compliments’. Although a vast majority consider these statements as compliments, to me, they smell like an archaic pattern of biased and sexist notions of female beauty.

Let’s delve a bit deeper.

What are the typical words associated with a mother? Caring, responsible, giver, nurturer. Rightly so! But we also tend to forget that a mother is a female too. And so she can be passionate, sexy and desirable. So why do a mother and her desirability have to be binaries? Why can’t a mother be sexy too, as organically as a lady who isn’t a mother?

We see many celebrities being tagged as ‘yummy-mummy’, ‘mamma-mia’. These tags are somewhere derogatory and also extremely class specific. More than appreciating their sex appeal such comments are deeply suggestive. And had it been the case of a regular, middle-class woman – its all the more unacceptable. A mother can be anything but sexy!

Mothers can be effortlessly sexy, they can be geeky, they can be traditional, they can be bold. Being aware of one’s body, being comfortable with it and exploring one’s sensuality is someone’s predicament – be a mother or not.

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But what hurts all mothers is comments like – ‘You don’t look like a mother!”

Motherhood is not a chink in the armour, rather it\\\\\\\’s our crown jewel. Let me clarify that we, mothers, don’t dress up to hide our motherhood. We dress to please ourselves not to underline our identity as a mother or daughter or wife.

What hurts me most is when women end up making such comments. They don’t even realize how they are unconsciously playing a part in the systematic perpetration of patriarchal notions of beauty – that limit beauty to young, unmarried, light-skinned women.

So instead of faking on social media with captions like – ‘every age has its beauty’, and ‘beauty comes in all shapes and sizes’ – let us ponder about our own internalized ideas of beauty and check our comments. As the cliche goes – ‘charity begins at home’.

Next time when you try to compliment (and this time I mean a real ‘compliment’ and not ‘comment’) a woman, try saying –

“Wow, You look so sexy!”

“ You look at your best self today!”

“So much to juggle, yet so effortlessly gorgeous”

Let us inculcate a conscious habit of eradicating cliched notions of beauty. Let us expand our horizons, our fraternity and our minds. Let us celebrate the Femme Fatale!

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