Body Positivity

It is important to emphasize body positivity. We live in a culture where we are constantly bombarded with fake, Photoshopped body images as the ones "truly" desirable and pressured to achieve unattainable beauty standards. I wish more people didn't have to grow up in an environment where they were always reminded how ugly they are or how less attractive they are, and how much more effort they need to put in to alter what they have, just to fit in with the narrow external ideals. I wish people (women in particular) didn't need to have their self-esteem built around every small step they take towards what seemed to be closer to those standards, instead of celebrating what they already have. I wish the mainstream media messages we are surrounded with were more open and inclusive of diversity instead of sticking with only white, cisgendered, able-bodied men and white, cisgendered, thin, able-bodied women as the 'norm'.  And when I say inclusive, I mean positive representations. Not stereotyped or bullying stuff, because there's absolutely no shortage of that.  

The following is a video from ThosePeskyDames on body positivity.

(I've written a transcript, because I realize accessibility is much more than just ramps. And this was possible because it was of short length so that I was able to download it. I apologize for not doing the same for other videos I've shared, its only possible when my slow net lets me.)

TRANSCRIPT:

Two things I wish I'd known as a teenager, and that are often still hard to remember today:

1) People are going to have all sorts of opinions about how you look, there is nothing you can do to control this, so it's pointless trying to.

2) The only person whose opinion matters about how you look is your own. Don't rely on other people to give you worth, they won't always be there.

Whatever you look like, there's always going to be people who think you're unattractive and misguidedly, think its their business to tell you so. Ignore them. Because there are others who think you're the most beautiful person in the world. And not even in spite of your so-called flaws and imperfections, often because of those things you think are so hideous and awful about you. This is something I was struck with, particularly while filming for the TV show that we're going to be in on Wednesday. We had talked to people about hair and the whole group of people we talked to, I'm not even exaggerating, physically recoiled when we showed them our armpits and leg hair. As far as they were concerned, any woman with body hair was disgusting. It didn't matter what she looked like, if she had body hair that was it, that was the deal breaker. And honestly, that's fine. Don't like women with body hair? Fine, don't date them. There's plenty of other people out there who either don't care, or for whom its a massive turn-on! This is a lie that we've been tricked into believing for our entire lives that beauty is some objective standard that we have to aspire to, when its entirely relative. We're told if you have body hair, no one would want you. Or if you're fat. Or if you're too skinny. Or if you have spots, or scars or stretch marks. Or if you're skin's too light, or too dark... the list is just endless! (My colleague I've always talked about my weight too, and there's a link in the description to my dieting week video which says a lot similar to what Holly said in her body positive video yesterday).

But body positivity is so much more than weight. When I was in secondary school, I got teased for a lot of things. I was a chubby, gingerish kid with braces, and I was a nerd. But one of the things that hold of me was I was teased quite a lot for my nose. Its not particularly huge but its not exactly dancy either, and that made me hate it. And I knew if I ever go for plastic surgery it wouldn't be to lose weight or anything like that, it would be to fix my nose because there was nothing else I could do about that. And then when I met my current partner, one of the first compliments he gave me completely out of the blue was that he really loved my nose. He thought it made me look distinguished. So I promise you, that part of yourself that you hate, that you think no one could ever find attractive, there is someone out there who thinks that's what makes you so incredibly gorgeous. And anyone who tries to convince you otherwise just isn't worth your time. You want to tell me that you think I'm fat, that I'm spotty, that I'm hairy, that I'm disgusting? Fine. I don't particularly want to sleep with you either. You kind of seem like a douche.

That said, you can't rely on other people to make you feel beautiful. They're too effectless. Yes, there's someone out there who thinks your fat rolls, and your stretch marks, and your hairy armpit and your giant nose are gorgeous. But there are seven billion people in the world and only a tiny percentage of those people are going to pass in and out of your life. The only person who's going to be there with you for the rest of your life, is you. And if you hate you, it doesn't matter if someone else thinks you're gorgeous. Because in all likelihood, one day they're not going to be there to tell you so. And you're going to be left with yourself and what you think of yourself, and you're going to be miserable. And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't feel that you can change your body. If you want to be thinner, go for it. If you want to gain weight, go for it. If you want grow your hair, shave your hair, wear make-up, don't wear make-up, whatever. But you need to question why you want to make these changes. And they need to come from a place of acceptance and not from a place of desperation of trying to conform to external ideals that you feel you have to fit in with. Acceptance and change takes time. But that's ok, because the way you look at the moment and the way you look between A and B is fine because there's nothing inherently wrong with the way you look. And accept that there are things about your body which you can't ever change. Or that it may be dangerous or difficult for you to change. And whether in the long run its really worth those risks just to make yourself look different. And it's hard. It's so fucking hard to be surrounded by a sea of messages that tell you the way you look is wrong, to not be represented as beautiful or represented at all, and to be continually reminded that you're not the supposed ideal. Which is where the second effects of this comes in and it relates to what Holly was saying in her video. Because just like you can’t rely on someone else to tell you you’re beautiful, we can’t keep dragging other girls down to try to make ourselves feel better. We need to stop making comparisons, saying “At least I don’t look like her.” Or buy into this ‘real women have curves’ bullshit like what skinny girls are just imaginary fairies.

We need to do everything we can to make it easy for each other, not harder. And more than that, we need to challenge the industry that makes us feel this way. We need to ask why so much of our media features exclusively white, exclusively skinny, exclusively able-bodied girls. We need to demand that we see ourselves and other women represented. And tell them that we are fucking fabulous exactly the way we are regardless of what they think.

I won’t feel this way on Wednesday. I know how loudly the demons in my head will be screaming “I look too fat” “I look too pale” “I look ugly compared to the other dames”.. But I’m going to keep fighting those demons, because I have to. Because we all have to. And the hopefully one day, we won’t have to anymore.

 

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Relating to Roosevelt's Sister

My recent change of self-perception and awakening to the disability rights movement has set me on a learning spree. All of a sudden I'm discovering some of the best blogs on disability, activists, writers and scholars (not only online but also few I am finding myself reaching out to) dealing with disability issues, and a new interest (not just interest, facination as well) in the field of disability studies. I want to do M.A. in it, preferably from TISS because they are one of the few universities in India that offer the course, they seem to be more accommodating of PWDs and it's worth. I'm actually relieved that the passion to do something for others like me is building up more than the fear of likely resistance I will have to deal with when presenting the wish to my parents. In a rather obvious yet strange way, I'm discovering myself. And seeing everything about me or what I've been through, finally, from a different angle - my side. The side of silenced voices, the 'special' children, the intitutionalised 'threats', the receivers of 'be exceptional or be dead' attitudes...and those challenging the status quo.

So when I read Rosmarie Garland Thomson's essay "Roosevelt's Sister: Why We Need Disability Studies in the Humanities", it was something that I could relate to in many places. Taking Judith Shakespeare from Virginia Woolf's famous book A Room of One's Own, she creates a similiar character, Judith Roosevelt, who has cerebral palsy and is the sister of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In a clear and realistic way, her life is narrated both in the traditional setting and contemporary period.

Virginia Woolf is probably our greatest modernist writer and our most creative feminist thinker. In Woolf's 1928 collection of feminist essays, A Room of One's Own she, invents a character she calls Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary sister of the famous playwright, who is equally creative and ambitious as her brother. In her amusing, but instructive essay, Woolf uses the figure of Judith Shakespeare to show the social constrictions women who wanted to write faced. Woolf invents Judith, who as Woolf has it, must stay home to care for the family while her ambitious brother Will goes off to school and then to London to try his hand at theater, and the rest is history for him. Dutifully, Judith obeys until her father plans to marry her to an odious neighbor. When she refuses, he beats her, and she runs away to the London stage door to offer her talents, where they are rejected. She becomes pregnant by a charming fellow actor she meets that first day. Disgraced, Judith dies alone in childbirth and is buried in an unmarked grave.

I'll offer here another figure to think through the social constrictions facing disabled women. Following Woolf, my heroine will be Judith as well. But this is not Judith Shakespeare; rather this is Judith... Roosevelt, the younger sister of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

continue reading here..

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On 'Natural', 'Necessary' And Change

One of the worst power oppression has is that the longer it prevails, the more it tends to get normalized. The more it's various forms and consequences appear like "that's just how things are". And the more 'normal' it becomes, the stronger a backlash it raises to anyone who questions or tries to change the situation. Because after all, you are working against what is considered an 'inevitable reality'.
Where and how did it start from, how universal is it, what would an alternative be like, all get conveniently hidden behind the facade of convincing naturalness.

From this point, oppression thrives by not just seeming natural, but in many cases necessary too. When someone brings to attention that women are overwhelmingly responsible for household duties or that they routinely face discrimination at the workplace, the immediate response is hardly to acknowledge the injustice itself but to defend it's being by saying, "oh well men face discrimination too, like the burden of providing for the family, so what's the big deal. Isn't that how a society keeps moving?" Sure. A society will definiltely go on even if it is at the expense of locking up half of it's inhabitants behind invisible (sometimes visible) bars. Slavery in America, for example, didn't put the American society itself into stagnation, it still had it's share of economic and political development. What it prevented was the progress of people of color and their rights to basic needs like freedom and safe living. What it held back (and still does although not in ways as brutal as slavery) was the advancement of a section of the society, whose deprivation not only harmed them but also denied many positive improvements for the society as a whole.

The question here is not whether a society would progress with/without gender oppression. The question here is how you define progress and what kind of a society would want to progress with it. If we think of progress merely in terms of industrial boom, acquiring latest weapons of war or increased national income, it doesn't speak much about the conditions of it's citizens, especially those marginalised. If women are treated like second class citizens, usable and disposble property for men, denied of equal rights and opportunities, aborted for being female, married off without consent before reaching adulthood, portrayed primarily as sexual objects in the media for male gaze, made to hate and give up control over their own bodies and sexuality by patriarchal religions, routinely harassed, stereotyped, underestimated and considered incapable of competition or achievement, what progress are we talking about? And how much progress can a nation achieve even if only in terms of economic development if we don't fully utilize half of it's human resource? The positive correlation between the the improved status of women in a country and it's higher level of development is one that cannot be ignored. And perhaps a question worth wondering what happens when India remains so bad for women.

(I clicked this pic from my sociology textbook, sorry if it's not

clear. The chains that tie her: economic insecurity, dowry,

traditional expectations/attitudes, early marriage, wage

discrimination, household chores, gender role stereotyping,

food discrimination, amniosentesis, and illiteracy).

Speaking about oppression being just a 'natural' aspect of social reality as the society 'moves on', a society that uses this as a driving force isn't a good one to begin with. There is something wrong at it's very core that requires change. If men have to bear the burden of being the sole bread-winner or play the major role in meeting the family's financial needs, it is because women have been denied from sharing that responsibility equally. It could be because they have been denied education, the opportunity and freedom to pursue a career or to simply put it, be 'equal' partners with their husbands. This is the product of "patriarchy, the social system characterised by male-centredness, male-dominance, male-identification and an obsession with control" (Allan G. Johnson). It is not an individual person, it is not a 'they' or 'us'. It is system of society we live and participate in, one that places men above women, one in which men are the default and women are the 'other' (we don't say "men's" football match, we automatically assume its a men's match when we talk about one whereas for women's we do, terms like "mankind" when used to refer to 'human beings' etc). It is a system that gives utmost importance to power and dominance and identifies these with maleness whereas femaleness and its associated attributes are devalued ("stop crying like a girl", "man up", etc). Patriarchy survives through the use of control, through rigid heterosexual-identification and punishing deviations from it's narrow norms or anyone who even vaguely points to it's existence. This is carried out by simply denying that it exists or at the worst by treating the pointer as 'crazy' or extremist. 

Patriarchy is not men, although it largely depends on men to keep itself going. Since it is male-identified and male-centered, anybody questioning it is in essence questioning male privilege. This is why most men see feminists as "man-haters", you know rather than "male-glorifying-female-devaluing-system-haters"? (rarely does it occur to them about how many men are feminists too). Because no matter how lightly we approach the issue of patriarchy, at some point it is bound to hit home, it is bound to evoke the realzation of how closely tied it is with men. And since most people's understanding of gender is as something biological rather than cultural, any attack on patriarchal attributes like aggression, control, emotional dissociation, toughness, being in power, etc is seen as an attack on every men personally. This misunderstanding puts a lot of women on the defensive side against feminism too, because who would want to live in constant rebellion with the very people you have to spend your entire life with/amongst? Nobody has to, but sadly, hardly anyone realizes that.

No system simply is. It is moulded, shaped and transformed by how we participate in it, whether consciously or not. It is reflected in every bit of our culture, be it language, television, newspapers, religion, education, family, art etc. Everyone's participation is mandatory, the only thing we can choose is how to do so. Privilige is not something to be ashamed of because you didn't get it by choice, it is something to be aware of. I have come to understand my 'white privilige' so when get someone telling me about my 'fairness' or come talking about "fairness creams", I now make it a point to tell them how beauty isn't about only 'one' color and that dark skin is in no way ugly. I may get "you're weird" looks/reactions, but still it sets a spark and besides, such reactions won't come from someone who values 'people' beyond their appearance. When you laugh at rape jokes, you promote the idea that rape is a laughable thing, that rape doesn't really matter. When you tell women to not "ask for it" by dressing 'modestly', you promote the acceptance of the idea of male-domination and female-submission. When you segregate toys for girls as dolls and doll-houses and those for boys as puzzles and cognitive skill building games, you prevent girl children from developing interests in math or science which in turn makes them internalize a belief that they cannot be as good as boys in these subjects, and thereby upholding the popular misconception. All of this and many more like these contribute in giving patriarchy a longer lifespan and keeping a better society at a more farther reach. 

Progress of a nation should be marked by the integration and improvement of all communities in it. Change begins at the individual level but without understanding larger systems and working towards transforming them as well, there will be little scope for social progress.

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