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Why do women get praised for multiple roles as though they were only a sum of all these compartments and not a whole person?
In how many different ways can a woman be praised for being a juggler of socially-defined identities? Were I Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I’d have answered, “Let me count the ways.” And I would identify so many, I’d end up having to juggle them, which in turn would lead to me being praised for being a juggler.
If my rant made no sense, consider this: social rhetoric, media and popular culture frequently collaborate to reinforce the image of a (usually successful) woman playing many roles. “Wife! Mother! Daughter! Activist!”, they’ll exclaim, carving womanhood down to individual parts and a woman’s identity to an assortment of such roles. Further, this is meant to be an appreciative assessment of The One Who Does All This and More, when relational descriptors are simply reductionist labels. Because if you move in closer, you begin to see the fine print about how a wife/daughter/mother/daughter-in-law is defined, when in reality, few or none of those crisply-edited specifications could apply to individual women.
Now here comes the confusing bit: But we do manage a whole array of tasks in different capacities, don’t we? Sure we do. Many of us. And granted, a majority of women still undertake the daily grunt work of chores, picking up after their families, running errands, and it is true that additional role expectations increase stress. But would it kill anyone to just see us as PEOPLE instead of peeling apart each act and compartmentalizing it in giant containers labeled with every possible relationship a woman is ever known by?
I don’t even need to highlight how men never get told, “Oh my! Son! Husband! Father! Businessman! Secret smoker on the pot! You do so much!” Every human being regardless of gender enjoys appreciation, and women frequently shoulder society’s thankless, less respected tasks, which makes recognition a wonderful thing, but as a person, please. As a human being who belong to herself: her body, her brain, her volition; not an automaton who goes about life fulfilling her relational tags, no matter how valuable, rewarding and all-consuming they are.
As a woman, I would like to choose my war paint. Don’t plaster me with tags to the point where you can’t really see me. The loss will be yours. And as a civilization, we lose something valuable each time we can’t see the uniqueness in an individual. And heaven forbid the foisting of those definitions becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and we begin to see ourselves as successful solely within their boundaries, or accomplished because social commentary lauds us in these specific ways. To those fracturing your identity—intentionally or otherwise—say slowly and clearly, “I may do many things, but I am wholly me.” Let’s keep pigeon-holes for the birds, shall we?
Pic credit: Hiking Artist (Used under a Creative Commons license)
Dilnavaz Bamboat's heart occupies prime South Mumbai real estate. The rest of her lives in Silicon Valley, California, where she hikes, reads, hugs redwood trees and raises a pint-sized feminist. She is the 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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