09 March 2011

The so called 'woman's day'

Few days back, the hubby and I were discussing how women did not protest when the songs sheila ki jawani and munni came out. And more so, when they won awards! It nauseated me to a great extent that these songs were appreciated. I feel they are plain derogatory. I mean, the dhobis put up a protest when Dhobi Ghat released, and no one protested when these songs were lauded!! But anyways, I will reserve my opinion on how we should come out of seeing ourselves and other women as objects of attraction, for some other day. What I will write instead is about this "anthem" that Start plus released for woman's day. (Check out the link, before you read further!)

My 2 cents on this:
You know what, let me first poke fun at this idiotic video, and then share my opinions :P
1) There are so many 'technical' bugs in this video.
You wake up looking all fresh with nicely done hair? seriously? When I wake up, I have a new hairstyle (which resembles the rockstar spikey hairstyle) and I have trouble opening my eyes completely till hubby pokes me in my tummy.

2) Then, you cook and send off your kids, spend time with the elders while the husband sleeps. Seriously, what time do you even wake up to squeeze in all of this?! And till what time does the husband sleep?!!

3) Then, you chase away people. Yes, run around wearing a "saree" (why am i not surprised!), become a substitute police inspector (are you kidding me?!), play with the kids, dance, and then go to work. Seriously, it would take me a day to do all of the above things before I went to work. Either the woman has more than 24 hours in her day (or maybe sleeps for an hour) or maybe I am not a Super-woman like her and dont understand all this. I prefer the second option!

4) And to top it, the song 'tu hi tu' is irritating.

When I saw this video on IHM's blog, I got confused. Clearly, I had new material to write about (or should i say, rant about). But the ridiculousness level was so high, that I got confused on what to write about. The channel's mindless portrayal of a woman and the media's carelessness and TRP greed, or its unfairness towards the women, or the unfairness towards the men (seriously, the man in the video looks like a wimp..who just wakes up, drinks tea and goes off to work, while the wife slogs away! You wouldn't want to be portrayed like that now, would you ? ;)). I will reserve the media bashing for some other day, and concentrate on how the advertisement is unfair. And no, even if it is Star Plus which publishes crap, it is high time we start paying attention to these portrayals and condemning them instead of 'not paying them any attention'.

To start with, what I don't understand is, why do we need to 'celebrate' woman-hood. What is there to celebrate? The fact that women (as they have shown in this advertisement) wake up before everyone, tends to the elders and husband and kids, cook, chase away people, dance, work, come back late and yet, on top of this, manage to keep a smile on their face?
Why put unnecessary pressure on women that they 'need' to do all these things in order to gain approval from the people around you? Why the need to be the super woman who "juggles career and home". Because seriously, life becomes simple if both (and all family members, in case of joint family) partners contribute to house work, and in that case the woman does not 'need' to juggle everything. It is too high a expectation, and an unreasonable and unfair one, at that. And I don't understand why women even try and meet these expectations? Why do we create these definitions of a 'perfect' woman, a perfect man, a perfect wife, a perfect mother? Why is making mistakes and being a supposed non-perfect entity such a big deal?! And why put forth these 'yardsticks' in the form of such advertisements as measurement to how good a woman you are?!

03 March 2011

A tag: Childish misconceptions.

This tag is making the rounds of the blog world, and I found it too cute to resist. 'Logic' to a child is different than 'logic' to an adult. But interestingly, 'logic' cannot be absolute. Because reasoning and logic is continuously evolving one cannot really say that a particular logic (or reasoning) is correct and a particular logic is wrong with 100% certainty. The logic I used as a child no longer holds true in most of the cases, giving this list of what now are 'misconceptions' for my adult logic.

1) I always thought that money grew on money plant. Just to strengthen my belief my cousin had kept some coins in the pot and told me he had proof.
2) I always used to wonder why we don't see our own eyes with our eyes. I used to also think that our eye balls can actually roll back in their sockets, and that way we can see the walls of the socket.
3) I used to think that there are wayside chocolate heaps in USA. Because everyone i knew as a child who came from 'foreign' got truck loads of chocolates with them.
4) I had sown a orange creme biscuit with the hope of getting a tree full of orange creme biscuits. I used to water it regularly.
5) I used to think the "songs" were stored in the audio tape of the cassette, and if I took out the 'tape' from the cassette, I will be able to catch the songs in my hands. With this thought in mind, I was the mastermind behind removing (and destroying) the audio tapes of my grandfather.
6) For the *longest* time, I thought oral sex meant kissing. I was freaked when i found out what it actually meant. This misconception was not when I was a kid, per se.. but quite grown up. Yea, I am stupid that way. :D
7) I used to think if I swallowed a seed, a plant will grow from my tummy. :D Thats why I used to hate eating peanuts as a child. Peanuts, in particular, because we had done an experiment in school where we had grown a plant from a raw peanut. Once, I actually ate a peanut, but was scared to drink water, because i didn't want to fuel the nut I was made to eat. :D
8) For quite some time, I was under the notion that I was a scientist. This was after I broke a thermometer, and the mercury droplets spilled on the floor. When I pushed two drops near each other, they (surprisingly) became one droplet. I was ecstatic, and held on to this belief that I was very smart and capable of 'inventing' things. This belief was soon broken :D

Take up this tag guys. I would love to read the creative things you thought as a child. :)