Oh Womaniya - Part II

Two “ women- empowering “ events captured the attention of social media in March 2015, and as a woman, I didn’t find either of them empowering, quite surprisingly, despite the presence of a feminist streak.

All for women rising and shining
(Picture Courtesy: Google images)

The first one was Instagram pulling down a picture of a menstruating girl with blood stains on her pants and the bed, citing it to be against their community guidelines. The Instagrammar, Rupi Kaur, attacked Instagram with allegations of accounts with women being “ objectified, pornified and treated less than human”. She also stated that this was a move to remove the stigma associated with menstruation and to make people comfortable with the fact that women menstruate.

While as a woman I support her when she says that menstruation mustn’t be considered taboo, I simply feel the picture is in bad taste. I mean, you wouldn’t take a picture of a dirty chamberpot to promote cleaning your bowels early in the morning, would you? There have been revolutions in India, trying to make menstruation a normal topic, but, as a woman who menstruates like the others, I found the picture quite disgusting. It aint a pretty sight, and the only thoughts it provokes are those related to bile and vomit. And I am a woman.

Yes please, give it a rest!
(Picture Courtesy: Google images)

While we hadn’t recovered from these crisis, “ My Choice”,a Homi Adjania directed video of Deepika Padukone for Vogue spread on Facebook and Twitter. This video features a mishmash of Ms Padukone with 99 other women, celebrities and non celebrities, with various expressions of their faces and Ms Padukone’s voice in the background, saying really pompous stuff. I watched the video about 3 times, and still don’t know what it attempted to achieve. While some choices made sense, like whether to marry, or what to wear and stuff, some sentences didn’t make sense at all. For example, “ I’m a snowflake, not the snow”. I thought I was a human being. Too much women empowerment for the already empowered women. As somebody who was brought up in a modern, free thinking society, the Vogue video was nothing but crap. Nicely decorated and glamorously, very pretentiously shot, but crap nevertheless.

The spoof was right - this does look like a shampoo ad!.
(Picture Courtesy: Google images)

Two other women in the meanwhile were pushed to the sidelines - Saina Nehwal, and Lt Kiran Shekhawat. Ms Nehwal became the first Indian woman to rank World number 1 and won the India open Super Series and had a lot of updates on social media and Lt Shekhawat literally epitomised the Navy throughout her life and even in death. The struggles Lt Shekhawat faced were relevant, quite identifiable, and yet reduced to a 350 word article in the newspaper, and zero presence on social media.

Saina Nehwal, after winning the India Open Super series, encouraging more women to get into badminton
(Picture Courtesy: Google images)

Lt. Kiran Shekhawat, India's first woman navy office to die in the line of duty. Born into a navy family, married to a naval officer and died while in the navy. Salute!
(Picture Courtesy: Google images)

The word “ empower” means to give power to somebody. The reason we feel that women should be given power is because sometimes we, consciously or unconsciously, restrict our women from doing certain things. What sometimes, we, as women forget is that with great power comes great responsibility. In this case, stories on Ms Nehwal and Lt Shekhwat needed to be empowered.

There is a funny quote which says “Men to the left, because women are always right” Well, we are human beings, and we do make mistakes. Time to stop the hype, girls, and start treating ourselves as humans, not gods. Here's a thought:

The Last Word
(Picture Courtesy: Google images)

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