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?!
7 comments:
Nice post!
and my I share few of your thoughts..I saw the video with a married friend for the first time and you know she related with it..in the sense she thought if someday she could be like the girl in the video!
I had a WTF moment! These stereotypes that our media promotes bores me. Be it an all rounder pativrata stree or a bitchy vamp. Its always either or for women. How about enough with this non sense!
They will never let us be. Sigh.
agree yamini! I feel there is no harm in 'improving' yourself and making good use of your time but why the stereotype that a woman has to do all of this?!
And portraying of 'extremes' is yet another problem :) I can rarely identify with anything they show in the media! arghh! I hate definitions and the expectations to fit in them
Sigh. This is a horrid world we live in. The pressure continually mounts. To achieve. To smile. To do it all. Maybe they forget the most basic truth - Women are human. Not superpowers.
nice bog.
Nice post...and I agree about the stereotype created by the media about stuff..but i guess they do it with anything and everything, don;t they?..We wouldn't have ads for fairness creams...a gentleman's expected to be polite, pay the bill on a date, open the doors for the lady...that's again typecasting attributes!
Agree, mansi. This was just one example. There are 'definitions' everywhere, and the expectations to fit into them! And sadly all of us do fall pray to them, at some point or the other!
I agree completely with what you wrote.. you know I haven't seen the video even now (because I am in office), but if I had I wouldn't have realized what you said but I wiouldn't have related to it either.. I would have been just indifferent.
And indifferent I was on this women's day. For the first time ever I too thought it was stupid to celebrate women's day. Neither did I feel like sending around "Jai Women" msges or put anything up on Facebook or Twitter.
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