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| Blogadda say’s it a Tangy post! |
It’s the year 2015, it is the much celebrated International-Women’s-Day time of the year and it is also a time when every stone and pebble is being turned
to raise awareness about protecting, nurturing and empowering God’s better-of-the-two
human forms, the ‘fairer’ sex – The Woman. And seriously, every step is being taken
towards the good cause –
- From outraging on Twitter, to Debating on
Facebook. - From pinning ‘Ten Ways To Be a Feminist’ on
Pinterest to Instragramming ‘I am Woman’ lyrics in cursive font. - From silent candle marches of a few hundred
people, to a mob of thousand students joining forces and killing an alleged rapist. - From fast track courts for crime against women,
to Bans on documentaries.
All in the good spirit of empowering the women folk!
Impressive, eh?
Impressive, eh?
Sadly, no.
None of this has worked. Every woman everywhere is still
facing a constant threat of – pick from the list below –
facing a constant threat of – pick from the list below –
- Infanticide. Kill the woman-to-be in the womb of
a woman who is anything but empowered - Education. Actually the lack of it. Zero
education if possible, but since this is 2015, let’s send her to school and
pull her out in a few years. Statistics here. - Molestation. Cat calling. Eve Teasing. Public
humiliation. Because a woman is God’s better creations, as mentioned above, and
if she’s wearing a pair of skinny jeans, she’s pretty much asking for it, no? - Domestic Abuse. Hit her because she married you,
or because she’s living-in with you. So what if you support the campaign about
saving the girl child on Facebook? If she has an opinion different to yours, and
mainly because she is physically no-fight to your Club-Bouncer body, you have
to right to beat the hell out of her. You Da Man! - Unequal Wages. Empower the fuck out of the woman
but pssttt, it is really necessary to give her the money she deserves? She’ll
go get married and have babies. Eek. - Rape. Going by the wisdom of the recent
media-and-judiciary created celebrity rapist, an empowered woman would easily avoid
being brutally killed if she just gives in to the gang rape. Easy peasy. Who knew? - Victim Blaming, or if you prefer profane, blood-boiling, infuriating lingo, then ‘Slut Shaming’. And you thought Rape would be
the last on the list, ha ha! After the molestations, the humiliations, the acid
attacks, the domestic abuse incidents, the pink slip hand-outs and the rape-cum-murder,
comes the winner of the list : Placing the blame of all the above on the woman.
This one takes the cake, no?
Oh well, the list is giving me the typical empowered women heebie-jeebies.
You know, the kind we get when we leave
our offices at 9 in the night and wonder if this fancy Uber cab is better than
taking the bus? Yeah, that.
You know, the kind we get when we leave
our offices at 9 in the night and wonder if this fancy Uber cab is better than
taking the bus? Yeah, that.
But I digress.
The main point of this post is fun facts about being a woman
and because the likes of ‘having breasts’, ‘pouting’ and ‘going to Goa’ have
already been covered cleverly in the Good Girls poster doing frenzied rounds on
the World Wide Web, I will cut it short and keep the list (very) short. Here we
go:
and because the likes of ‘having breasts’, ‘pouting’ and ‘going to Goa’ have
already been covered cleverly in the Good Girls poster doing frenzied rounds on
the World Wide Web, I will cut it short and keep the list (very) short. Here we
go:
Fun Facts About ‘Being Woman’:
- Every woman has to concede to disturbing labels
at some point in her life. Ambitious,
bitchy, easy/slutty/undesirable, difficult/cold/undesirable, gold
digger/opportunist, and the most silly of all – being such a girl. Not many of
us take it to heart though, we are smarter than that – what? Some of us do?
Well, yeah. If you label someone undesirable in her tricky teens, she is most likely to
carry the hurt deep inside her heart, even when she grows up to be a successful and award winning start-up owner. Yeah, well, you can argue that she should be smarter than to let such a tiny thing hurt her, but then the she can argue that you should be sensitive and then the argument will take a life of its own so let’s not got here. Let’s just not be mean, okay? Okay. - Being a woman, no matter how smart or successful you are, will be referred to as the weaker sex. In front of you. And you will be expected to take is easy, or just go with it. Yeah right.
- A woman is called a feminist like it’s a bad
thing. OR. A woman is called a non-feminist like it’s a bad
thing. None of the above is a bad thing. It is not mandatory to slot yourself in
one of the two. Men bashing is not feminist. Changing the last name after
getting married is not anti-feminist. What matters is – Compassion, Kindness and
Progress. If a woman stands for all this, she’s A-OK even if she doesn’t shout
FEMINIST! /NON-FEMINIST! from the rooftop. Leave her the hell alone. - A woman who earns more than her husband is
emasculating. A woman who doesn’t work is a failure. A woman somewhere in
between is blah. I can’t even explain this one, it hurts my sense of self worth
having to explains such an offensive feature of this list. - Every woman (okay, ALMOST every woman) has body
issues. Thanks to the ideas sold to us by the big players of consumerism, each
of us has a totally unrealistic expectation of beauty. We crave to be deemed attractive,
even when we know we’re being shallow and silly. That is the magic of advertising!
Everyone wants someone else’s body. Your friend’s behind is so much better-looking
than yours, the colleague’s skin is far fairer/smoother/glowy than yours and oh,
how is it even possible that the plump girl from the school is now a hothothot
size zero? Doesn’t matter that friend works her ass off (no pun intended) in
the gym, or the colleague eats healthy slash has anemia or something, or that
the plump girl is suffering from an eating disorder – you lust after her
apparent perfectness. You don’t know their strengths or issues, but you are jealous
of her. The world is unfair, let’s have
a pizza and feel bad about our bodies. Sigh.
- A woman faces the harshest criticism from – surprise
surprise – fellow women. And how could
she not if she’s grabbing all the attention with her slutty dress, right? Um,
wrong. If you are a woman, try being supportive of another. It doesn’t matter if
you are a passionate self proclaimed feminist – if you point fingers at a
fellow woman for being promoted, blaming it on her “character”, you are no
better than the men committing those heinous crimes. What? You support the Women Empowerment
campaign? Oh, you’ve even Liked it on Facebook and RTed every tweet
religiously? Well, that virtual world activism is utter bullshit if in actual
life you question the clothes actions or location of a woman who’s been a
victim of rape, abuse, molestation or prejudice. Seriously, just drop the act
for a moment and think – what thought popped in your brain when you first heard
that a rape victim was getting back from a party late at night, or was wearing
a short skirt? Doesn’t matter if you are an ardent women’s right crusader or an
acclaimed (in your social circle at least) Stop
The Rape campaign activist – if you have ever uttered the words ‘it was
her!’ about another woman in any of the situations listed above, you are a
threat to the entire Women Empowerment movement. Be kind, be empathetic, put
yourself in her shoes and even if those shoes can’t make you see her reasons,
just go with it and be supportive. Empowering women can be so much easier, quicker and
not to mention, FUN, if the girl-on-girl sabotage is no more a thing to worry about. Start with yourself, start today (by praising me on a public forum – just an idea.) - Getting constantly judged by the past. Seriously,
the fact that she was dating a loser (aka your crush) in college days, doesn’t mean
she was asking for an abusive husband later. So what if she wasn’t scoring full
marks at school Math? That doesn’t mean she isn’t good at her Advertising job
and hence doesn’t deserve to be paid as much as her male counterpart. Past is
gone, poof! Future will be here soon and if we are not careful, it will still
be in dire need of a Women Empowerment moment, which is just plain sad.
My list can go on till Tuesday noon but I will stop now. I hope
we make some more progress with the entire Feminism or Women Empowerment or
Whatever-Else-We-Call -it Movement, so that mothers like me don’t feel powerfully
and totally guilty for bringing our kids (especially daughters) in this world. Here’s
to hope!
we make some more progress with the entire Feminism or Women Empowerment or
Whatever-Else-We-Call -it Movement, so that mothers like me don’t feel powerfully
and totally guilty for bringing our kids (especially daughters) in this world. Here’s
to hope!
And oh, Happy Women’s Day people!
1 thought on “Fun-Facts About Being a Woman”
Girls, Be Nice To Each Other - Aditi's Monologue
(March 8, 2016 - 6:53 pm)[…] very long ago, I blogged about how Girl on Girl Sabotage is probably the saddest of the list of all setbacks to the so called Women Empowerment crusade. It […]