Being a woman, prioritising the issues of women comes as my first responsibility but the journey to grow the right perspectives of feminist ethos needs a lot of dedication, patience and ample episodes of learning and unlearning.
Having an open-minded educated family that reinforced the democracy of opinions in me and always motivated and cherished me to study more, I had adequate freedom to grow up with my personal opinions but still, the prevalent stereotypes of society affected me. For instance, the beauty standards demanded straight hair and fairer skin, the college corridors required me to have ‘girly,’ aspirations and society wished to limit me to typical traditional gender roles.
Since my teenage, I have been fond of films but those mainstream Bollywood films had stereotypes. I read books but those were unrealistic books. I scrolled the news but the news too had typecasts. Most of the girls at college were proudly glorifying their attempts to ‘fit in the frames,’ in the best possible way. These widespread cultural dogmas sometimes made me feel ‘less important,’ because I was not perfectly ‘fitting in’ as per prevalent parameters. As a result, I too struggled to follow the general trends. It took some years to realise that such attempts are irrational and every woman is super beautiful and super important in her respective ways. Curly is gorgeous, wheatish is golden and creative sagacity is also a form of power.
In those teenage days, I was in the grip of beauty standards and the patriarchal glorification of women. Despite supporting the freedom of the female population, I supposed that women must fit in the prejudiced frames. Later, the exposure to works of great feminist authors like Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Atwood, Arundhati Roy, and Kamla Bhasin, infused me with an analytical sensibility. Therefore, I ponder that good realistic books, logical cinema, and the freedom to express and have open conversations are essential to rectify viewpoints and recognise prejudices. Now I happily cherish the feminist process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis to reach rational visionary conclusions. Indeed, I was a feminist in making and still, there is a long way to go.
These days, everything I observe comes up with deep-seated anti-women tendencies. Whether the grandeur of the East or the shine of the West, the ‘popular,’ cinema, songs, slangs, poems and abuses; everything is flooded with awful consumerist sexism. Consciously or subconsciously; these parameters weaken the voice of women. Consequently, now I focus on acquiring better coping-mechanism techniques to fight them.
From politics, religion and administration to the fashion industry, the conformists and liberal forces and everything in between have ‘normalised,’ to degrade women by counting them as ‘secondary.’ Hence in my view, the liability of a better feminist is to stir up some discomfort in the ‘comfortable set-ups of inequality.’ Coping skills and constant little rebellions are the best mediums to reinforce visionary frames and to honor other women for existing as they are, without expecting them to become ‘perfect,’ in an unrealistic way.
My journey to becoming a better feminist has also equipped me to fortify a culture of ‘co-existence of sufferings,’ because anywhere any kind of discrimination targets the ‘entire women community,’ while standing up for fundamental rights waters a ‘sense of sovereignty.’
In a short span of time, I have explored that vulnerability and strength are interrelated and every tiny spark of feminist rebellion has a great value that needs to be treasured and cherished on a daily basis. Like, complimenting women for how they look can mitigate the venomous aftereffects of capitalist beauty-standards.
Similarly, valuing the existence and dreams of women around me can boost their self-esteem and rejecting the anti-women conspiracy theories can empower decisive freedom of the half-population. With lesser judgments, more empathy and ample courage, every day I am stepping in the world of full-fledged egalitarian values that attain power from the history of great feminist rebellions. As a more suppressed part of human history, now the feminist mutiny needs more space, more awareness, catharsis, appreciation, recognition and sensitivity to flourish at peak.
While adding fresh values in my personal dictionary of feminism, now I also foster an ‘alchemy of pain,’ the art of turning wounds into power. I know the alchemy of pain belongs to women, and indeed bigger revolution are possible with the little steps.
