Feministaah

Politician Vasundhara Raje was recently fat shamed by a male politician who nastily commented, “ And this Vasundhara, give her rest, she has become very tired… has become very fat… Earlier she was thin… She is a daughter of Madhya Pradesh. Ask her to rest .”    (Sharad Yadav is hardly Adonis himself, but that’s not the point). He said it aloud, but sexist comments are constantly being made about women in power, whether they are politicians or corporate heads; for movie stars, models and sportspersons, it’s always open season on barbs as though by being attractive and famous, they have offended those chauvinists who still believe that women should not step out of their homes.   This is just as bad as calling Indira Gandhi the “only man in the cabinet,” the implication being that women are not supposed to have power, and if they do, they can wield it only like men, because there seems to be no definition of female power. Today the term “woman power” is used as a ca...

Some readers would remember a cartoon with a woman in a bikini and sunglasses looks at a woman in a burqa and thinks, “Everything covered but her eyes, what a cruel, male-dominated culture.” The woman in a burqua in turn looks at her and thinks, “Nothing covered but her eyes, what a cruel, male-dominated culture.” The upshot being that what women wear is more often than not decided by men; either males in their family, community or religious leaders, or even the fashion industry, dominated by men. Recently, a village in Andhra Pradesh banned women from wearing nighties during day time, because it was “inconvenient” to see them dressed thus. The Tokalapalli village heads ordered that women cannot wear nighties from 7 am to 7 pm.  Interestingly, the village council which came up with the ban was headed by a woman—though one wonders if she came up with the idea on her own. A violation of the ban would invite a fine of Rs 2,000, and  those who give information about the w...