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Women are so conditioned to not feel as though they own their own things, home, kitchen,... life - that the default is often a seeking of permission.
Women are so conditioned to not feel as though they own their own things, home, kitchen,… life – that the default is often a seeking of permission.
Trigger warning: This post contains depiction of normalised violence against women, and may be triggering for survivors.
The guilt hisses when from my own kitchen I give myself an extra serving of rice. for whom my apology, or from whom permission? the baby that I can’t conceive because I’m too fat? (or so I’ve been told, repeatedly) my body, that has never loved me back? every indigestible ‘don’t’ and ‘no,’ an unsealing crack.
at the store, I find a lipstick like, look at the price tag and put it back. for now, it’s his money, not mine, that makes my world go round and I hate to ask, even when I know he’ll say yes. no one quite understands why, not even I. I loathe everything about this “choice.”
I find I must take a deep breath, every time I sit to write. I know my words will offend but who? and when? and why? and how? each question, a bullet, aimed at me. oftentimes, I simply am not brave enough. better women than me have died quite literally, for daring to speak out, so fear colours the ink in which my words are wrought .
the neckline on the dress I love is a little too low, a safety pin comes to the rescue, but I flinch at my own hypocrisy. I wonder why their eyes matter more than me. what I wear and how I wear it will speak louder than my poetry. when the anger surfaces, I quell it with practicality.
But it exhausts me, being the good girl. it is hard work, finding the loopholes that allow my little “badness.” I can’t just be fallible, you see, it’s not just about me. every little fault, hung out to dry, is a judgement on all my sisters. because it’s always “all women.”
So then I perform this sleight of hand. the docile goddess is but a disguise, a misdirection, and meanwhile it is the rebel girls that my secret hand feeds. every day i water that seed, so a day will come when my daughters won’t need to ask, “may I?”
Author’s Note: This poem was written in response to a prompt, “Why do womxn take permission?” shared in the Facebook writing group, Womxn Of Political Writing. The prompt made me think of the many ways in which I do take permission. Most of the time, I seem to need my own permission –because conditioning means that even when I theoretically know that I can and must do what makes me happy, guilt, shame or fear still arise.
It was this that I wrote about then.
Image source: shutterstock
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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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