{"id":701,"date":"2016-05-19T07:42:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T07:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=701"},"modified":"2016-05-19T07:42:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T07:42:07","slug":"india-bengaluru-bangalore-molestation-delhi-gurgaon-feminism-gender-sexual-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=701","title":{"rendered":"Parental Advisory For Young Girls: Button Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>am the mother of two teenage girls growing up in Gurgaon, Haryana. This is what my average day looks like.\n\nMy 16-year-old leaves for a theatre class, followed by a trip to a local market for a snack with friends. She is wearing a T-shirt with the top two buttons undone and plenty of cleavage showing. I raise my eyebrows. \u201cWhat?\u201d she asks me, defiant.\n\n\u201cThat calls for attention,\u201d I say.\n\nShe shoots back with, \u201cYou know what you are doing. You are slut-shaming me.\u201d (I regret introducing that word into her vocabulary several times a day.)\n\nI protest that she is going to Galleria market in an auto. I try to explain that she cannot control whom she will get attention from and that she is too young to be able to handle the consequences of unwarranted attention. Brimming with 16-year-old confidence (a confidence I had a role in building) she says, \u201cIf some strange guy comes near me, I\u2019ll kick him in his balls.\u201d\n\nWith that she makes a dramatic exit. As I peer out of the first-floor window, I see her buttoning up one of the two buttons.\n\nAt the end of each day, I don\u2019t know who wins. But to me, the sight of my daughter buttoning up, feels like failure.\n<\/p>

***<\/p>\nNo matter which way you look at it, Gurgaon is a comfortably savage playground where sexual harassment awaits you everywhere. It is a place where the degree of a woman\u2019s safety is directly proportional to the length of her hemline and her sleeve.\n\nI assume you are tuned into the \u201cclash of cultures\u201d theory. In fact, you probably just rolled your eyes and muttered, \u201cNot another article on Women\u2019s Right to Dress as They Please, please!\u201d\n\nWell, it isn\u2019t quite like that.\n\nI believe, as most women do, that they have the right to dress how they please. I say to my young \u2019uns, \u201cBe yourselves, don\u2019t be afraid,\u201d and then make them doubt themselves. I support women claiming their spaces and places, being bold and brave but I am a scared parent who cannot let two minors, whose safety I am responsible for, be the ones who will lead the revolution.\n\nI am a feminist and I am fucked.\n\nIs there an innate hypocrisy in what I believe and what I say? My daughters seem to think so. I don\u2019t.\n\nI believe we must dress to negotiate our way through life \u2013 through cities and cultures \u2013 demanding respect and giving respect. We can do this without being complicit in misogyny and without compromising our rights.\n

I\u2019m telling them to be smart, negotiate, and recognise that assertion of individuality is a symbiotic thing.<\/blockquote>\nHow do you picture a women\u2019s rights activist in this country? Why do people who work in the fields of sexual assault, gender equality, right to property, education, and health for women, seem to dress conservatively (for lack of a better word)? Maybe activists love Indian handlooms. Or maybe, there is more to it than that.\n\nThe clothes they choose let them blend in with surroundings they don\u2019t belong to and get on with the battles they are fighting, including fighting for your right to wear skimpy clothes and not face any unwanted attention. They do this without having an identity crisis. These women are liberal, educated, and empowered to wear anything they want. Why then, do they prefer khadi kurtas over resort-wear for every day on the job? Ideology?\n\nAs an artist, my work takes me to male-dominated traders\u2019 markets in the narrow alleys of old Delhi. My purpose is to procure material. Why would I want to wear a flowy evening dress there? What change am I really going to effect by wearing my preferred uniform of summer vest and shorts? So I put on a cool muslin kurta and get on without getting eyeballed by everyone around me.\n\nMy household is alive with these debates. My girls are young. I taught them about rights and gender, but I think we need dialogue on nuance.\n\nWe are not here to provoke people who we know will fail the test of liberal acceptance of dressing. We are here to challenge the systems and beliefs that make that behaviour possible. This is a belief that stems from empathy and ethics, both of which I care for deeply. I often tell my daughters that when we dress in ways that don\u2019t match the contexts we are in, we are also casting our privilege in the face of those who don\u2019t have it. At this point, I realise I am teetering dangerously close to the \u201cshe was asking for it\u201d lobby: According to that horror fantasy, \u201cprovocative\u201d clothing invites sexual harassment from poor, illiterate men.\n\nExcept, I am not. My daughters are fully aware that clothes do not<\/a> matter<\/a>. My fear is not merely that my daughters will face unwanted attention; it is also that we won\u2019t be able to show adequate respect to the context we are in. My only allegiance is to a drive that the world become a fairer place.\n\nNone of this stems from modesty and morality \u2013 I don\u2019t care for either. Which is why, I get so riled when those around us try to dictate the way women ought to dress<\/a>. On a recent morning, I was woken up by a phone call from the disciplinary head at my daughter\u2019s school. \u201cT is wearing a bright pink bra today,\u201d she upbraided me. \u201cDid you not see her this morning? It\u2019s showing through the school shirt. You know only beige and white are allowed.\u201d Err, yes, I offered, but they were probably in the wash. I was told that T was being given a warning and that the next time, she would be sent back home. \u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d I answered.\n\nIt was only after I put down the phone that the morning fog cleared from my brain and the \u201cI should haves\u201d began. I should have said, \u201cHow dare you? Girls wear bras. Deal with it. Why do you get to describe your school as \u201cprogressive\u201d if you feel threatened by a pink bra?\u201d Eventually, I did write a letter to the principal expressing my thoughts and told my daughter to wear the pink bra again and that I\u2019d deal with it. Nothing happened.\n\nSo am I sending my daughters mixed signals here? I don\u2019t think so. I\u2019m raising them as aware, intelligent girls. I\u2019m telling them to be smart, negotiate, and recognise that assertion of individuality is a symbiotic thing. It is not an individual pursuit. Environments matter, context matters. Use your judgement, argue your stand. \u201cJust because\u201d is the enemy of justice.\n\nIt has been a long battle for women to get to where we are today \u2013 let\u2019s not trivialise it without reason. Let\u2019s pick our battles carefully. Fight the core of patriarchy and misogyny, not the upper crust that is concerned with decisions that diminish in the larger scheme of things. And when the fight is all done and the world is a fair and equitable place, we can all dress as we want.\n\nUntil then, button up, pretty please!\n\nThis piece was published earlier on August 30, 2016.<\/em>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m guilty of advising my daughters to be careful of what they wear and to think about context. I’m a feminist and I’m fucked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gender"],"yoast_head":"\nParental Advisory For Young Girls: Button Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm guilty of advising my daughters to be careful of what they wear and to think about context. 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