Category Archive

I’m behind on my writing - adjusting to a job like the one I have is difficult because while I’m learning a lot, the routine is suffocating me. What an idiotic thing to complain about, I know. I’m feeling overwhelmed about the fact that I have no plans for August, and am torn between desperately searching for a job, and running away to somewhere. I’m not really the running away kind, in the way that I’ve been daydreaming about, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s just because it’s always what I’ve told myself. I’m feeling stuck, and tired, so writing hasn’t been on top of my to-do list these days. My apologies.

In any case, behind on my writing means I didn’t get around to writing about Loving Day, which was last week. A belated Happy Loving Day to you all. The Washington Post featured a great article - “What Mildred Knew” - that is definitely worth reading if you haven’t yet.

The other day I got asked a question from one of my best friends, an Indian American living in Texas, a friend whose life is a stark contrast from my own.

“So have you just given up on finding an Indian guy?”

Where could I begin? I couldn’t explain to her, someone who grew up in a context where there were only two kinds of appropriate men to date (Indian-Hindu; White), that it wasn’t that I’d given up on anything, that I’d been struggling with the guilt of dating white men for over three years now. And I couldn’t find the right words to tell her that it had both nothing and everything to do with race.

I hadn’t sworn off white men exactly - more like men altogether - but I had definitely decided that the problems of my past relationships could have been attributed to ignorance about white supremacy, white privilege, and the loaded histories and contexts behind relationships between white men and women of color. The risk of being exoticized and fetishized, of feeling colonized as a body, as an individual, could be avoided if I avoided relationships, specifically relationships with white men.

Well I think we all know what happened then, so I won’t bother reflecting on that again (moving on is hard. but that’s an entirely separate, and probably password protected post for another day).

I went to a wedding on Saturday night, tagged along with some family to this big North Indian Bollywood-esque wedding. There were probably four hundred people there, all dressed up, and at the head of the reception hall, the bride and groom sat like awkward cake-toppers on a throne that resembled a prom-photo backdrop. I was the only young woman with short hair, and the only woman who wore black (which, at a Hindu wedding is perfectly acceptable, though apparently not as appropriate as Barbie pink or Vegas teal).

As one of the groomsmen prepared to make a toast, he turned to the groom and began: “Dude, I always thought you would do something stupid, like marry a Chinese girl, and have to learn to use chopsticks or something. But at the end of the day you did the family right, you did us all proud, by marrying within the community.”

I was seething. is that the right word? It was seething mixed with stinging tears mixed with having the wind knocked out of you. I was all of those things, but managed to maintain my own plastic expression as half the audience clapped ferociously over the notion of “doing the family right.”

My parents did not “do their families right”. They married out of communities. They married out of religions. They married out of region. My mother was a triple threat to my father’s community and vice versa. The women in my father’s community felt they had been done wrong, that my mother had “stolen away one of the good ones.” My mother’s parents were progressive enough at the time to be supportive of the marriage, but they both dealt with the consequences of their daughter’s choices from their families. And while they were legally allowed to get married in India, I don’t doubt that they paid in other ways for their “betrayal to their own kind.”

My friend has dated exclusively Indian men. She is a perfect candidate for the kind of narrative her community strives to fulfill - a beautiful, intelligent woman who is looking forward to a life in the suburbs with children and maybe a dog. She and her husband will play boardgames on the weekends with other North Indian couples, and their social life will revolve around Indian functions, poojas, and weddings.

This just isn’t the way I grew up. I feel no real connection to South Asian culture - my own parents never drove culture into me because they too couldn’t handle the other aspects that come with it - the moderate politics, the gender divided functions, the classism, and prejudices.

So I told her the truth in the best way I knew how. No, I hadn’t “given up” on Indian men - the ethnicity of my partner just doesn’t matter as much as his politics - his racial and gender politics, his ability to negotiate through the dynamics that are bound to arise in being with a woman of color. Meeting straight men like that isn’t like shooting fish in a barrel, it turns out. More like standing blindfolded in a lake trying to stab at fish with a fork. So I’m in a privileged position not to have to limit myself to “Indian Men,” I’m not going to. There is a part two to this, about my failure as a candidate for the seemingly prototypical Indian man, but that’s really another issue altogether…

Until next time.

From her collection of essays, Sister Outsider. Because sometimes, when we are at a loss for words, we should turn to the writing of the people who help us to remember that we are not alone.

“Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over the other and thereby the right to dominance. Ageism. Heterosexism. Elitism. Classism.

It is a lifetime pursuit for each one of us to extract these distortions from our living at the same time as we recognize, reclaim, and define those differences upon which they are imposed. For we have all been raised in a society where those distortions were endemic within our living. Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. This results in a voluntary isolation, or false and treacherous connections. Either way, we do not develop tools for using human difference as a springboard for creative change…

Ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to mobilization of women’s joint power.

As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of Color become “other,” the outsider whose experience and tradition is too “alien” to comprehend…

The literatures of all women of Color recreate the textures of our lives, and many white women are heavily invested in ignoring the real differences. For as long as any difference between us means one of us must be inferior, then the recognition of any difference must be fraught with guilt. To allow women of Color to step out of stereotypes is too guilt provoking, for it threatens the complacency of those women who view oppression only in terms of sex.

Refusing to recognize difference makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls facing us as women.

Thus, in a patriarchal power system where whiteskin privilege is a major prop, the entrapments used to neutralize Black women and white women are not the same…

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying…”

I am plagued, dear readers, by three large and loaded words that have haunted me in college for nearly four years. Two terms that are plagued themselves by overuse and misunderstanding. And I’m going to try to get to my issue with both terms, though it could very well happen that I get stuck on one and have to finish up at another time.

I’ve been called oversensitive many times, in many different contexts. I remember having to do assignments in middle school where you have to describe yourself for some reason, and I often picked the term “really sensitive.” Hell, that’s what I was, really - sensitive about things, about what people say to me, about what people say to other people, about people’s actions. I still feel this way; of course now I don’t connote these traits with oversensitivity. I don’t believe sensitivity towards certain actions and hegemonies keeps me from developing the thick skin I need to survive. And I don’t believe there is anything “over” about my sensitivity.

There is a line drawn, it seems, that divides the normal or appropriate amount of concern from all other amounts. If normalcy dictates what is an appropriate amount of sensitivity (which varies based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc.) to have about a given circumstance, then oversensitivity perhaps implies sensitivity in some sort of marginal space.

I think maybe using examples is a better way to explain myself. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in the past (long ago, when this blog was in its first weeks) that there was an ex- who was filled with good intentions who told me that I was emotionally high maintenance and didn’t I think I was being a little bit too sensitive about certain things? This was in response to my bringing up the way our time was divided and whose schedules we worked around in the relationship (if you guessed “his,” you would be correct). At the time, my response to this criticism was to hold my tongue whenever I felt compelled to ask why aspects of the relationship were going the way they were.

I won’t suggest that my response now to claims of oversensitivity is to look those claims in the eye and spit on them. There are moments when the doubt creeps in, that perhaps I’ve searched too far through my progressive lens and have started to split hairs, have felt emotionally charged or impacted by something that doesn’t matter, that signifies nothing about larger institutional systems of oppression. The little voice says to me…maybe women need to buck up.

This is a part of self-loathing, though, isn’t it? It appears in it’s ghostly form and haunts us from the inside, telling us we are not as good as the beautiful people around us. It makes us doubt, makes us drained of our thick-skin-reserves so that we must take the time to exhale, exhale, exhale away the comments we have heard all our lives that rise to the surface again.

Sigh - those comments. They really are like a little plague that doesn’t seem to be an ailment until you are having a conversation with a male peer and you find yourself wondering why he looks slightly disengaged when you bring up the political and you think, “I talk too much. I’m talking too much. He’s looking at me like I’m oversensitive.”

And then you return to your room and you call those women of color who support you through your thick skin and thin and they help you ward off those ghosts for a little while longer.

I keep getting asked what I dressed up as this weekend for the big Halloween party on campus. I was a bit hesitant in my response, because at this point I still hadn’t decided whether or not I could handle the event. I was probably going to go, I had this great 90s dress I’ve been wanting to wear that I cannot pull off on a random Wednesday. Furthermore, I wanted to do some article research, having recently decided to be an opinion writer for our school paper. Let me tell you, this is entering a lion’s den to some extent. And it’s actually an entirely separate post that I’m still not ready to write that involves racism and sexism in the classroom and my choosing mainstream journalism in an attempt to keep from feeling like a quitter. A lot of students argue that Halloween is the one holiday that’s all about fun and is sort of this horrifying combination of debauchery and identity swapping, but the reality is, in the way that it is practiced in mainstream America, Halloween is never all about fun for me - it’s usually about trying to deal with the problematic costumes around me.

I’m to focus on two examples here because there is simply too many things to cover and these two examples really got me thinking this weekend.

First, I saw these students dressed as homeless people jingling bowls and hats to beg for money from the crowd. They had gone all out: dirt smudged faces and tattered clothing and unwashed hair and expressions that attempted to emote wear-and-tear. The argument for the costume I suppose is that part of Halloween should be about dressing up in identities that are completely different from our own. But I think the reality is that Halloween is the time where people can get away with dressing up in particular costumes, a way of being racist and classist and homophobic without being called out on it because they aren’t actually saying anything or expressing opinions, they’re “just dressing up”. It’s “just a costume”. I’m going to make a few assumptions here, but I think the students who chose “homeless people” as their costume are probably in the exact opposite situation as homeless people on campus: they are provided housing. They are getting an over $100,000 education. They aren’t starving, they aren’t living in the streets, they have access to showers and probably have enough money to purchase new clothes and live a comfortable life. The privilege of being able to dress up otherwise is offensive and classist, and reflects a kind of ignorance that even now I’m having trouble processing.

The second costume I want to talk about is one that I seem to have seen a lot on websites and over the weekend: the Pocahontas/ stereotypical Native American costume. With regards to the argument “Pochontas is from Disney and I was dressing up as a Disney character” my response is that Disney has racially problematic representations of individuals and helps to perpetuate many stereotypes about particular groups of people. So hiding behind Disney isn’t really going to help justify your costume. So often, the majority of individuals around me, myself included, ignore and exclude the history of indoctrination, imprisonment, destruction, and annihilation of Native Americans in California and the United States. When students dress up as Native Americans they are suggesting that the history of violence and oppression against Native Americans is something that can be forgotten, that their history and identities can be reduced to a culturally appropriative costume that can be donned by anyone on Halloween, that racist representations of Native Americans is appropriate.

My point here is that the “geishas” and “gangsters” and “belly dancers” and “maids”, the people who have the racial privilege to be able to dress up as “terrorists”, and “ethnic people” need to think about the racial and class privileges that allow them to do this….

Many people seem to choose costumes that are outside of normalcy - there is this combination of stereotyping and further marginalizing and often culturally appropriating communities. This is about exercising one’s privilege by dressing up as the Other - so when I see a white woman dressing up in the everyday clothes of someone from India, for example, there is something that allows that individual to feel comfortable in exploiting and appropriating another culture and identity, while also disregarding the history of that community, for a day that is apparently “all about fun”.

Yuck.

I’m writing about Halloween in conjunction with The Day of Red not only because they are happening on the same day but because there’s something to be said about costumes and the violence that these costumes are ignoring and making invisible. We need to think about the violence that occurs everyday against women of color and why there are so many women that think it’s ok to dress up in ethnic costumes, that do not encompass the history of violence and silence that affects the actual communities of women who are being stereotyped and caricatured.

We need to think about cultural appropriation of cultures and the kind of violence that appears in that process and in those cultures and what it means to simply walk around with particular aspects of the Other culture but without that trauma and without that violence (colonial and imperial and physical and emotional and patriarchal) that is deeply embedded in those communities.

We need to think about why there are people who can dress up today as Native AMericans, Geishas, Mulan, Princess Jasmine, Arabs, South Asian People, Belly Dancers; who can dress up today as beaten and murdered and bruised and bloody women from stories and myths, while there are Other women of color who are dead and who are stripped of their agency and who are raped and traumatized and beaten and silenced everyday.

I wrote the entire post - it took me two hours. I was so looking forward to putting it all up.

And then wordpress did not save the draft even though it said it had and it is lost forever. It was such a good post. It was such a well written post and it simply cannot be replicated. Nothing you’re about to read will be as good as what are now mere ashes floating in cyberspace.

It’s one of those days where this kind of thing makes me get so mad and then I just cry for 10 minutes and then it’s over.

So instead of finishing up my work at home this afternoon, I will be attempting to rewrite the post as well as trying not to mumble profanities while doing so.

I have spent nearly a month going back and forth between commenting on the New York Times article that was published regarding skin lightening creams in India. As a U.S. citizen and inhabitant of the First World/Global North, I find myself so weary of commenting on trends or situations of this kind that are taking place in the Global South/Third World/developing countries (from here on out I will be using the term developing countries). It’s very easy to get caught in the mindset that somehow, one’s education or upbringing or condition or geography grants the person some kind of right or privilege to decide what is best or appropriate for another community of people. It’s easy to get swept into the postmodern missionary system, where phrases like “helping” and “saving” become ways of further removing agency from those communities. Language is an important and influential thing. So I’m going to try very hard not to get caught up in deciding what is right or wrong about skin lightening in India, and focus on the argument that is being made about the companies that are making these creams. This is a complicated issue because it speaks volumes about the larger issues that are at play here - the media and advertising, sexism in the workplace, long histories of patriarchy, and globalization.

I will be referring to this article here - entitled “Telling India’s modern women they have power, even over their skin tone” - it is an archived article so I’m not sure if there will be full access to it. Maybe someone will find a link to the article on another website. For now I will be putting up small excerpts from the article in order to talk about a few things that I thought were a big problem.

“The modern Indian woman is independent, in charge — and does not have to live with her dark skin.

That is the message from a growing number of global cosmetics and skin care companies, which are expanding their product lines and advertising budgets in India to capitalize on growth in women’s disposable income. A common thread involves creams and soaps that are said to lighten skin tone. Often they are peddled with a ”power” message about taking charge or getting ahead.

Avon, L’Oréal, Ponds, Garnier, the Body Shop and Jolen are selling lightening products and all of them face stiff competition from a local giant, Fair and Lovely, a Unilever product that has dominated the market for decades.

Fair and Lovely, with packaging that shows a dark-skinned unhappy woman morphing into a light-skinned smiling one, once focused its advertising on the problems a dark-skinned woman might face finding romance. In a sign of the times, the company’s ads now show lighter skin conferring a different advantage: helping a woman land a job normally held by men, like announcer at cricket matches. ”Fair and Lovely: The Power of Beauty,” is the tagline on the company’s newest ad”

Fair and Lovely’s advertising has always been targeted to dark skinned and often working class women who should lighten their skin if they want that promotion, or a job, or respect, or a husband. You might YouTube some advertisements of the company - they often depict women who are shunned by some high power executive or modeling agency or studio run by Western-clothes-wearing-light-skinned-Indian folk. Then they go back to their homes and use the cream and transform into similar looking W.c.w.l.s.I.f and everyone is so taken aback at how good they look and then they look so happy and youthful now that they have new skin. The problem goes beyond the issue of telling women that they can obtain lighter skin and invoke more opportunities - the problem is that this company is reflecting companies and workplaces that do in fact discriminate against women who have darker skin, or are not from global cities like Bombay or Delhi. Before I go on, I will say that this is not an exclusive characteristic of developing countries - the U.S. still, albeit not necessarily as overtly, privileges certain women over others in the job market and in everyday situations and discriminate based on gender (how much do you look like a woman), color, race, age, sexuality and class (where did you go to school, what kind of education have you pursued, etc.). The advertising for products like Fair and Lovely (and for newer lightening creams made by L’oreal - called White Perfect - big sirens going off in my head about that) continues to enforce certain color and regional and class related prejudices in communities.

Here’s the thing that I really want to get into though.

“‘Half of the skin care market in India is fairness creams,” said Didier Villanueva, country manager for L’Oréal India, and 60 to 65 percent of Indian women use these products daily. L’Oréal entered this specific market four years ago with Garnier and L’Oréal products, but so far has a small market share, he said.

The idea of ”glowing fairness” has nothing to do with colonialism, or idealization of European looks, Mr. Villanueva said. ”It’s as old as India,” he said, and ”deeply rooted in the culture.”

There’s no denying that the notion of ”fairness,” as light skin is known in India, is heavily ingrained in the culture. Nearly all of Bollywood’s top actresses have quite pale skin, despite the range of skin tones in India’s population of more than a billion people.”

Fairness has nothing to do with colonialism or the idealization of European looks?? Oh Mr. Villanueva, what a silly man you are. Because what you should have reminded the large population of people who read the New York Times and use quotes from authentic Indians as facts about the entire Indian population is that while fairness, i.e. light skin, has indeed been privileged in Indian culture for years before British colonization, it doesn’t mean colonialism didn’t reinforce the power of white skin.

I remember extended family members always reminding me of the many things that can apparently make you dark - don’t be out in the sun too long. Don’t drink so much tea (did anybody get that one?) it will make your skin dark. I had the feeling that everything that young girls weren’t supposed to do was rooted to dark skin. Dark skin, at least for North Indian communities, meant you worked in the sun. Maybe you couldn’t afford servants. It meant you were poor or working class. But if anybody thinks that privileging white skin didn’t get reinforced by white folk coming to India and taking over the entire nation, then I’m going to go as far as to say maybe they’re in a bit of denial. Because with the white skin of Britain came whiteness and white privilege and those things become very tied together. So while fairness doesn’t have everything to do with colonialism or whiteness, it sure as hell as something to do with it.

I read some comments floating around the internet, and on the Sephora blog, that compares skin lightening in India to tanning in the U.S. This is a very interesting comparison to me, because from the outside it appears to be a valid one. But I’m going to argue that it isn’t and here’s why in a nutshell: when white people tan, they aren’t stripping themselves of any kind of white privilege that they have - I understand that there is a stigma about white people being considered “pasty and unattractive” but tanning does not strip white people from the privileges that they benefit from because of their race. In fact, tanning is a way of benefiting from the exotic-ness and trendy appeal that comes from dark skin without the racism and colorism that many if not most people of color face in their day to day lives. Lightening one’s skin strips brown folk of oppressions that they will encounter based on the way they look. Tanning is a luxury. Skin lightening is a process that is created out of the institutions that tell women (and men) that it is a product of survival. Big. Difference.

I’m going to end on this final reinforcement - this is a complex issue. Not because skin lightening creams are a big issue - education is an issue. Poverty is an issue. Patriarchy is an issue. And they are issues everywhere. Skin lightening creams, and that NY Times article, is an issue because it is a testament to these larger issues. It is a lens through which issues of race and color and gender need to be challenged and talked about. It is a portal through which whiteness and patriarchy and media can be discussed.

Now I am going to save this post in three different programs and proofread and publish it.

Crossposted at feministe 

I am, contrary to possible common belief, in the process of writing a post. It’s taken me a while to adjust to my internship and to sort out my thoughts coherently enough to write. But the posts will begin to flow soon enough - for there are many things to say.

In the meantime I wanted to tell my small little audience of readers about this movie that is releasing in Los Angeles on June 15th and in select U.S. cities over the summer - I am not sure about possible release dates beyond North America. The film is called Amu, the site is here, the description of the film is below (taken from the website):

The year 1984 has a dreaded historical significance for India’s Sikhs, and one oddly buried deep within the collective memory
of that country, and for that matter the world. Indian-American director Shonali Bose resurrects that period marking the brutal
ethnic government abetted massacre of thousands of Sikhs by Hindus in her film, “Amu”.
Between three thousand and twenty thousand Sikhs were the victims of indiscriminate slaughter over three days, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards acting on their culture’s separatist sentiments. The ensuing horrific sectarian violence against the Sikhs brought such shame and indeed guilt to the perpetrators, that the incident is absent from any national dialogue. In addition, the failure to bring the perpetrators to justice, among them police and the politicians, meant that Writer/Director/Producer Bose was subjected to censorship of the parts of the movie exposing this massive cover-up, while filming in India.
“Amu” crafts the horror of that period as a dramatic story with historical components. Kaju (Konkona Sensharma) is a recent college graduate and aspiring filmmaker who returns to her homeland to visit with relatives in New Delhi. Adopted when she was a baby and taken to the United States by an Indian family, Kaju (once called Amu by her real mother) is shocked to learn back in India that her adoptive parents’ version of how she became an orphan, is untrue. Rather than her parents perishing in an apparently nonexistent malaria epidemic, Amu discovers that they along with her baby brother perished in the 1984 massacre, of which she was the sole survivor in her family.

I have had the pleasure of meeting the director and encourage anyone with the opportunity to see the film to do so. I think it is going to be amazing - I’m going to see it this Saturday and will be sure to post my thoughts about the movie.

To those of you that do not know, I am quite a fan of the television series, “The Office”. I will not go into details about why I enjoy the show because I already have (although, the wit and commentary on the show has depleted since I wrote that post. But that conversation is for another time and another blog).

For those of you that watch the show and have not seen the season finale, do not keep reading. Big spoilers begin here.

In the last 10 seconds of the show, Jim asked Pam out on a date. There he is, in the interview room in New York, and he sees this little note that Pam gives him and he thinks about the conversation they had at the beach. And there is Pam, speaking to the camera, and Jim walks in and says “What are you doing for dinner tonight” and then says “Great. It’s a date”.

Let the era of Jam begin.

I’ve always been someone who becomes extremely involved in whatever I’m watching- I cry in movies, I brace myself at the edge of my seat during season finales. And by the end of this episode, (I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this), I found myself flushed with happiness at these two crazy fictional characters finally getting together. Lord knows they both deserve it.

I love the “will-they-won’t-they” shows on television. Although this cannot be the only factor as to why I watch a particular series, it is a large part of why I watch “The Office”. Pam and Jim are characters that are built to be loved by everyone - and it goes without saying that Jim has a huge amount of appeal, both in the show, and as a character. I needn’t explain why. Let’s just say he has a case of the “Charming Man” (also, another post).

But what I want to flush out right here is something that has been floating around in my mind for nearly a month.

The media gave me a false model for how I thought relationships were supposed to work.

I always believed that if the timing wasn’t right, it would eventually be right. That if a man ends up breaking your heart, he’ll come around later on, begging to be forgiven. That if you fall for your best friend, you’ll come out stronger at the end and totally happy for him and his partner. That sometimes, running back and telling the truth about how you really feel will pay off.

Ah silly brown woman. How stupid you were to think those models worked for you. How silly that you did not factor in timing more, and circumstance more, and politics more and things like racism and sexism more. How wrong of you to think that straight men turn to romantic gestures and grand confessions when they want to win over a loud and rigid and thick-skinned heart.

Before I went to college, I just assumed I would graduate with a significant other. I thought I would spend my four years dating lots of people and having complicated but not melodramatic relationships that were founded on the utmost respect and communication and understanding. We would move in together in our 20s, and maybe one day get married. He would follow me wherever my life after college took me.

But of course somewhere in the midst of my third year I looked around my small liberal arts college and realized that this little fantasy could be no further from the truth. And there are two parts to explaining why.

The first part is that when you’re at a small liberal arts college filled with predominately white, upper middle class, straight men, you find that there is nothing the majority of the student body wants more than to live a consequence free and commitment free life. Relationships are hard to find - they become complicated by the small student body and by the general suffocation that the campus provides. Dating is nearly impossible. And reputations are carried through the campus pretty quickly. There is a very small percentage of students that want to be dating the militant with high standards.

Let’s sidebar very quickly so I can say this: having “high standards” falls at about the same place as having “thick skin” - both are part of survival. Both are things that I want to embrace and here’s why. Respect, a consciousness of one’s own privileges, (the list can of course go on), those things should not be considered high standards. They should be considered standards. Give-ins. Factors that help me decide who makes the cut.

The second part is that I realize that my version of the picket fence house cannot co-exist with the way I want to grow as an individual and as a brown woman. I can’t get married when I’m in my 20s. I can’t even be in a relationship while I’m in my 20s. I still need time to figure out what I’m doing! And that’s ok. It’s lonely sometimes, and frustrating often, but it is definitely ok.

Timing is a funny thing. It can really change the course of who we get to know and who we can build relationships with. The more I think about it, the more I feel that loving other people and being loved is really about solidarity and compassion for one another, about making sure that there is a constant dialogue about the issues that oppress us and empower us. That we learn from each other.

The academic year has ended so I am on my way to consistent blog writing once more. Last summer, my blog was a staple to talk about everyday things - it has transformed into a space for me to write about how larger political issues and politics of particular issues, have come to affect my everyday life. Finally, a direction. Finally, this little blog has a sort of theme - I no longer feel guilty for writing about myself and my life as much as I want. If people do not want to hear about these things, there are many other bloggers in the internet sea.

I want to write about two things.

I watched my best friend in the whole world and two other very good friends graduate last weekend. Each is going off to do wonderful things and I hope to keep in touch with all three.

I once got very offended by a comment that a (now) very good male friend of mine made. He said, “You’re really bad at dealing with change”. There it was, out on the table. And part of the reason I resisted this comment so much is because it’s true. I find myself dragging my feet when it comes to closing a part of my life and approaching a new phase. This is why a few weeks before graduations, the end of academic years, birthdays, inevitable break ups, etc., my stomach gets knotted and my heart curls up into the fetal position.

This year however, there was a bit of growth. Last year my goodbyes were long and hard to do and made me cry and blubber on my way out the door. This year, despite the difficulty in saying goodbye, they were short and civil. Had someone filmed the goodbyes, they might have thought I was cold and didn’t particularly care about these people.

Had the camera continued on into the privacy of my room, it would have recorded me sobbing loudly (I cry quite loudly - none of this delicate tears streaming down the face. All out, hyperventilating, can’t-speak crying. And I embrace it). Then I blow my nose, wipe my face, and walk out the door to whatever meeting or dinner or airport I need to be at.

What I’m getting at in this poorly written, unimportant post (I’m a bit rusty on the blog writing, so hopefully people will cut me some slack) is that heartbreak is exactly that. It is our heart breaking, silently within us until it can no longer contain itself and it explodes into tears and shakes and fear and wailing in our rooms. It can make us ill and it can even kill us. It can make us forget to eat and when we do, we cannot taste.

But what I’ve come to realize is that heartbreak is more than break-ups and goodbyes. It is the everyday, the nostalgia for our homes and our families and our friends. It is the pressure put upon our steadily pounding hearts by white supremacy and patriarchy and heterosexism. It is the comments we hear on the streets and the insecurities we feel in our skin that can break our hearts.

All of the women of color in my life have broken hearts. They cannot be mended because they were shattered the very moment they were assigned the labels that weigh down on them that we desperately pray will not matter.

This said, let me also now say that these same women have thick skin. Often I think we want to hide from this thick-skinned description. I know it makes me think I am unfeeling and too cold-hearted. I think the reality is, we need thick skin to survive. Thick skin is what helps us to put food on the table and to tape up our broken hearts. It helps us to feel safe in a world where we are constantly threatened by various degrees of violence.

I can only hope that every person whose heart is broken by the day-to-day can find spaces where they might temporarily strip away their thick skin.

I’m back. I’m writing. I’m trying.

That said, I will be writing. My academic writing is my first priority these days and I don’t have to time to write papers and keep a blog consistently. I used to be able to before. But it seems I only have the capacity these days for one or the other.

I have however continue to read blogs daily and there are so many posts I always want to link to. Here are a few - not all are very recent, but they are all worth reading.

1. Bollywood and the Oscars. Ok there are two reasons why I love this post. One, I completely agree. India can never be allowed to submit “universal” films. It always has to be specific to Indianness or Indian culture (whatever that means). Two, I found out the author is a friend of one of my professors whom I respect a lot.

2. Tyra Tyra Tyra… Racialicious continues to be the blog I read most frequently (can you blame me? how can one resist the daily stories that appear about race in the media), and this post on Tyra Banks and her talk about body image are… I don’t know if I can find the words. Her sports illustrated cover makes her look even more stretched out than she does on the show. How many women of color do I know have the curves (or lack thereof) that she does? Yeah. Thought so.

3. Male privilege! Ah, Andrea, I’m so glad you continue to write for shrub.com - it makes me so happy. This is a great overview of how male privilege is seen in discussions about sexism, that comes down to the reality that being a pro-feminist man means stepping up.

4. ” Is it okay to work this damn much for the desire of trying to create change?” I’ve read this post so many times because I realized in the last week that I am probably going to go into academia and pursue a career as a professor. And there are too many questions and fears related to this question of work, and whether or not it is great work, and whether or not it is worth it, especially in thinking about “future things” such as children, and family (in fact so many questions, that this is what my next blog post is about). I really love the blog in general too, particularly the new look - it’s one of the few blogs that keeps me inspired to write!

Until next time.

Well I’m settling into classes and all of that so it’s time to write about something (no, unfortunately not India this time - the posts will begin soon - it’s still too personal to reveal without some serious emotional drainage) that has been on my mind a lot in the last few days.

My friend Sarah said something along the lines of this the other day:

“It’s taken me 21 years to get to a point where I know that the things I say are smart. That I am smart. There isn’t going to be anything I say in class or wherever that is completely stupid. I know what I’m saying. So I’m going to say it.”

Many if not most women of color I know undermine their intelligence. Not out loud or very explicitly but there it is. I am one of these women. I sit in a literature class or history class, sometimes even a gender studies class, with something to say formulating in my mouth even before I sit down. And then as quickly as I’ve formulated the thought, doubt slips in,

“I’m probably wrong. I don’t know what anybody in the class is talking about. What I have to say is probably not related. I feel stupid. I am stupid. What am I doing here? I don’t belong here. People are going to look at me and will be able to tell that I don’t belong here. I’m forgetting what I wanted to say. I’ll probably jumble all my words if I open my mouth…”

I become intimidated by professors, white men, white women, vocabulary. And this is something that hasn’t, until recently, gotten better over time. In fact quite the opposite. I have become more introverted and terrified in academic spaces as each semester passes (with the exception of gender studies classes - those classes have tended to be my ’soap box’ classes, where I rant, aggravate, educate, and occasionally storm out).

Until recently. Something happened (hm, I guess this is a bit of an India post) in becoming further absorbed in the concept of “doing one’s work”. And that is not wasting one’s voice. This means staying quiet when it is necessary to stay quiet. And speaking up when there are things to say. Because nothing at this educational institution should encourage me to maintain silence and convince myself that I have nothing valuable to say.

I made a goal for myself last semester, after being reprimanded by a professor for not “participating in class”, to speak up in every class, at least once. It was so difficult - I’m almost ashamed to admit it. But finally it becomes easier more possible every day.

It hasn’t fully settled into my head that I am intelligent enough to speak up without hesitation - I don’t think that will change for a long time. But it is about remembering everytime that I have the ability to make my voice a stronger one every time it gets used. And that it has the power to start dialogue, to encourage other ‘underminers’ to speak up, to shout, to sing, to rant, to yell, to whisper and to laugh. The privilege of those things is too useful and filled with possibility to be smothered while I’m sitting at my desk.

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid” -Audre Lorde

I don’t know how I feel about writing a post on body image, but I’ll keep it personal and refrain from speaking of it generally. My whole life I’ve always been described as “skinny”, “really thin” - who “eats like a bird”, who is asked about my eating habits and health. Doctors have referred to my body in one particular way: “slightly above average in height and slightly below average in weight”.

Let me sidebar here and say a couple of things. Talking about my body, about thinness, about health — those are all privileges that I have - things I can think about pretty frequently, even amidst other issues. I spent a little too much time looking at Indian Barbie dolls and got too disappointed when I was unable to find an abundance of body image or disordered eating sites for women of color, let alone South Asian women. This post isn’t about fixing that, of course. It’s just…here.

I’ve gained some weight in the last 4 months. More and more I find myself studying or sitting in class and habitually poking my waist. I can go minutes at a time before I realize why my other hand isn’t free to do anything else. It isn’t that I never talked or thought about weight before - I grew up with my mother’s stories about constantly being heckled by everyone in her family because she was a “chubby tomboy” - how was she going to find a husband, how was she going to settle down, what would she look like at the wedding. I watch her struggling to pursue a healthy body versus a seemingly healthy image. My mother is an amazing woman. But that is entirely another post.

I went shopping today and I thought of this binary that is being created in mainstream body image discourse for women (white women actually because who the hell is talking about women of color - yeah that’s right. no one.) - either it’s what I’m used to seeing on television or in movies: really thin really white women or ambiguously ethnic but still fair women and the occasional thin black woman who is super feminine, etc. etc. And then on the other hand there’s this “love your body for what it is”-Dove campaignesque-clothes for all sizes attempt to counteridentify.

So I stopped in the size of the store that I am used to stopping in and suddenly realized - I hate this. I hate shopping by number and feeling like I’m somehow “losing” if the jeans I try on don’t fit. I just want comfortable jeans made for long legs that don’t let my full ass hang out of the top of them! So I did. Ok, no it wasn’t the most accomplished thing I’ve done, no it wasn’t world peace. But dammit, I put on those jeans that were 3 sizes larger than what I’d been wearing 4 months ago and I felt great - I could breathe I could start going from victim to system blame and tell myself that I’m ok. And just because no one is validating this brown skin and this large butt and these small breasts and these thick thighs and thin ankles and awkward shaped nose, nothing is going to keep me from feeling inadequate anymore. And that. felt. awesome.

I’ve only written one postcard to postsecret, despite my many secrets. And it said: I got over you because I was tired of feeling ugly.

Finally I can start feeling good about myself without being driven by someone else.

So I bought 2 pairs of jeans that accommodated this working-class pocket and decided that even though it isn’t a new year, it doesn’t mean I can’t resolve to take care of myself, and remember that self-affirmation is so much a part of feeling loved.

Just writing a little note to you to say a few things. I know I’ve mentioned you in previous posts regarding the language used to describe you as well as how they seem to have made a mini-Ash version of you in the new Diwali Barbie. But in the last 48 hours your name is the reason why my blog has suddenly received so many visitors. According to my blog stat search results, it seems everyone is dying to know if you’re going to marry your celebrity friend Abhishek Bachchan, now that you’ve recently made a new bollywood film with him. I have to say, it’s a good thing you’re considered one of the most (if not the) most beautiful women in the world - I should be grateful, considering you’re Indian.

Let’s talk about that for a second though shall we? Umrao Jaan, eh? You went all out thinking you could remake such a classic film and I’m sure everyone was so happy you had the opportunity to replace Rekha. It’s funny because I just saw this movie for a class recently - the original version that is. Seems like a couple of men try to sell her off to a family before a brothel, but you know why they can’t? She’s too dark. They’re more interested in her friend, because she’s fairer.

That’s an interesting dynamic isn’t it? That part of her fate rests in the fact that whiteness is privileged in this context? It sure is a good thing it isn’t now! Oh wait - that’s right, I’m sorry. Your green eyes and white skin probably restricted that theme from coming up in the new movie huh. At least you are vocal about being ashamed that Indian women continue to lighten their skin - hell, you said it on Oprah!

I’m not blaming you, in all honesty. Lord knows you did a great job in Devdas - even your cameo in Bunty Aur Bubli made me hold my breath a little. I’m just resentful about the way you have been manipulated as an icon of foreign and exotic beauty - you are an(other) commodity for the West to exploit and ravish over. You don’t look very Indian, I’m just going to say it. When was the last time a South Indian or a dark-skinned North Indian woman was considered beautiful in Europe or the states? Maybe that woman from America’s next top model. I wonder if she lost the blue contacts (maybe she was influenced by you!), especially after voicing how proud she was to be a dark skinned Indian.

I wish we could sit down, have a nice cup of chai, and talk about where you really stand in all of this. I know your celebrity status and everyone’s obsession with the pale-exotic isn’t your fault - you’re just a good Indian girl on your way to international success. No one can blame you there.

Just remember who you represent, please?Maybe ask an interviewer or two to stop asking you how you feel about beauty and sensuality and the Kama Sutra and switch to..I dont’ know…politics. art. something. The challenges you had to face in becoming Miss World even.

Take care of yourself - I think of you everytime I hear someone talk about how sexy mysterious Indian women are and when I see that Indian barbie with green eyes.

-obw

Just a short post to end this long day.

I spent the entire evening working on a presentation for transnational feminist theory - it’s the introduction to Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, written by Alexander and Mohanty. I spent more than six hours working on the presentation and still feel that overwhelming since of inadequacy that often accompanies me in the midst of this privileged education. It was difficult to get past the irony of reading about how feminist theory in the United States continues to be Western and Euro centric and how feminist praxis and activism is a key part of feminism, but is often left out of feminist scholarship - for my feminist theory class (a class located, in case we didn’t know, in a small town in California).
Theory is so difficult for me to understand, and not simply because of the vocabulary - it’s difficult because it is so resistant to including emotion and experience as a valid source - a source that I would argue is strongly tied to the identity of many women of color. What does that mean for women of color theorists? Can there be any? Should there be any? The idea of writing theory makes me cringe a little, I’ll admit. The audience is limited and it’s difficult for me to see the possibility of bridging the gap between feminist theory and feminist application. I know it happens, but tracing the path seems impossible.
I guess my question is, what does feminist theory enable me to do as a feminist and activist(-in-the-making) and most importantly, as a woman of color? I wonder if Mohanty considers herself a theorist - I bet she considers herself a writer with the privilege of an education who understands the prioritizing of praxis over theory and knows that “feminist theory” still has a normalized connotation of white, Western, urban, straight, and upper middle class. It’s why we have to keep adding “transnational” to the beginning of the phrase in order for it to even begin to include women of color as theorists and writers instead of marginalized tokens.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m getting quite attached to peppermint tea.

Someone recently remarked that in his college days (circa 1990) at the one women’s studies class he had taken, what he wished most was not that the “man-haters” of the class would speak less or be a little less angry, but “would bathe…or at least shave”.

I took it as a kind of divine sign to finally sit down and write this post, which probably would have been written differently prior to the conversation above.

First a bit of context. I grew up in Texas, and went to a suburban middle school filled with very white Christian blondes who all sought to be the next pageant winner or at least find Mr. Right as soon as possible. The girls in my year took physical education, which involved changing into a uniform of thigh length shorts and a large shirt that popular girls would make tight by rolling a knot in the back. We had one talk before middle school P.E. began and it was to remind girls of a phrase that would rise from it’s dusty-pre-teen-grave and be reiterated in high school textbooks and infomercials: personal hygiene. I was educated about personal hygiene in three ways:

1. Young women wear bras. It is part of staying clean and healthy.

2. Young women wear deodorant.

3. Young women shave their legs and underarms. Everyday.

The everyday bit was never explicit but it became the habit expected of all hygenic girls in gym - All I can really say about it is that was the way it was.
I stopped shaving everyday in high school (I had moved to San Francisco at this time) and only began shaving “when necessary” (parties, events, skirts, dresses). And then when the stream of problematic boyfriends started, well then that became an additional necessary situation. Every one would praise me when I “finally got around to shaving”.
Now, shaving is something I do (and I say this with hesitancy and considerable fear of casting aside my feminist identity) “when I feel like it” (eg. it’s been a month and I need something to make me feel accomplished) or for family situations (my father associates shaving for women with shaving for men - it’s what you do. For personal hygiene.). Except my underarms. Those I do as soon as it becomes fairly apparent.

I struggle with this to some extent, yes. Yes, it’s a choice that stems from a sexist institution, yes a real choice might give way to some kind of women’s liberation that I have yet to experience. To that, there are only a few things I can add to complicate such a solution/logic.

First, I’m a South Asian American women’s studies major. That’s enough to send my extended family into cardiac arrest as it is. My parents stand by this diligently but it is a very real factor in my life that isn’t going to go away - and though I grit my teeth when I lie and say I am also an English major (that I chose women’s studies as a stand-out major for graduate schools), and take the constant stabs at being a “man-hater”, “one of those feminists”, etc., shaving is one thing they can’t say anything about. It stops being proof at Americanization or reckless youth or the result of the blasphemous liberal arts education. It’s normal - so it isn’t talked about.

And this isn’t just in the case of my family. Because family (aside from my parents who are pretty consistently supportive of all feminist related actions, or at least generally keep questions to themselves) is an institution that I can battle tactfully (I like to think of it as an art). This campus is quite another story. Besides being marginalized as a woman, a woman of color, a working class woman of color, a South Asian working class woman of color, a liberal SAWCWOC…I am a women’s studies/english joint major. And I’m loud. And I’m intimidating to many. I get asked about what I’m going to “do after I graduate” more here than I do at home. Where is the safe space? To some extent, it comes in the ability to blend in feminine personal hygiene. And I’m not proud to admit that, I’m not. But there it is. To think about it any further is privileging an issue over more important ones, such as my racial and ethic identity, my battle with culture, marriage, the elitist nature of transnational feminism, even the hair that grows out of my head. Until those larger conversations become more moderated in my head, I can begin to identify what a “my choice” really is. And I hope that changes one day. I really do.

Until next time.

Thank you Dora, for this post - (courtesy of Shrub.com) I too, never wanted to be a white girl. I just wanted to be exactly like a white girl.
And yes. We need to keep talking about this…

I have more to say but it will have to wait.

Due to time constraints, this will be an entry that will most likely be revealed in parts. Now that this disclaimer has been put out there, I have no regrets about starting and ending wherever I please.
I shall start at the beginning.
I never cared about hair before - and by that I mean, not to the point of being able to empathize with other women of color about their hair. Hair to me has always been about expression, and style, and femininity, but it has never been, until recently, about my identity as a South Asian American woman.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have posted this just for you. I am in the middle of facilitating a workshop - race and racism - to my mentors. There is a great video playing, that is keeping their attention off of me updating my blog.
I am doing well. Although it is only the second day of training, so I’m bound to feel even more exhausted. The group is learning, and I realize that is my real goal for them. To what extent they learn will all depend on where they are already at when they begin.
My thought for the day is…
It makes me sad when women don’t consider themselves feminists even though they are. It makes me angry at White feminism, who have taken over the term and used their racial privilege to take over a marginalized label. So women of color don’t have a term, and must fight to reclaim feminism, and even then, only if they choose to pursue that fight.
Why is it so important for me to have that term? Feminism. I don’t know. Maybe because I want to belong with the feminist community. I want the norm of feminism to not be White upper middle class straight women’s feminism. I want to reconcile my role as Indian and American, and feminism seems to help me do that.
So many reasons…
This is what a feminist looks like.

So, this is a great podcast which I highly suggest subscribing too - the link here is an episode that covers a lot of ground, including the media continuing to exoticize women of color when they are finally represented (if you haven’t seen the Aishwarya video I posted earlier, well then you need to, particularly if you are skeptical of this belief. Of course if you are…you probably aren’t reading this site ever.)
Listen to it while having breakfast or during your lunchbreak.

This is about language people! Language!

Aishwarya Rai is one of those women that I give a lot of credit to for paving some way for Indian women to be maintstreamed somehow but Lord Knows she could easily pass for exotic white and isn’t really helping by remaining passive about the language used about her. Then again, my victim-to-system blame lens reminds me that this is really about the public being eager to pounce upon any chance to objectify the other…

“My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. You fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also.
Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial destortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.” -Audre Lorde, The uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

“I’m not telling you that women are weak. Women are strong. Women can do everything as well as men. Women can do much more. But a woman has to seek that vein of strength in herself.” -Nair

“Mom, Dad, Let me find my own husband”

read it.

I hit a real low today, for some reason. I got so overwhelmed by all these little things that have been making me upset and have culiminated into one big thing. I feel better now, although exhausted. I feel very disconnected from people, with the exception of 3 or 4. I think a part of it is loneliness, a lot of it is the last spurts of anxiety that were created towards the end of the semester.

I just wanted to say I read your blog a little today, and I’m proud of you for keeping one and getting all there is to be said out in the open for others to see. It takes guts. And self possession. Things, of course, I’ve known you’ve had all along… -Kel

That was the highlight of my day. It is the only reason I’m doing better now.
I’m in that sunken place where I’m going through the motions of my day and relaxing as well as getting things done. But my mind is somewhere else every minute of it. I keep trying to steer it back onto a steady plane but it hasn’t yet.

What happened to me? I feel like I was more in control of my life during the school year than I am now. All the things I brushed aside with “I don’t have time for this” has resurfaced in the last 48 hours and I can’t seem to think about anything else except those questions that are too big to deconstruct. Am I really making a difference. What am I doing. What kind of career or job do I want after school. What do I really enjoy.

I’m thinking of this time when Rhodessa Jones came to speak and read through some of the questions she asks the incarcerated women that become involved in the Medea project. The questions are broken off into groups and one of them was love. I only remember two questions in the whole series but it was “Who do you love? Who loves you?”
It used to be very difficult to answer the latter question. Aside from my parents and family, and a few good friends, I have never been assured of the people who love me. Suddenly it seems far more difficult to answer the first — or rather, the long list of people I assumed I had has become the same insecure list I had in response to the latter question: my parents and family, and a few good friends. I don’t know why this matters except that it reassures me of something I have always been afraid to admit has changed about me. I don’t trust people like I used to. And I don’t trust people like I used to because I know what it looks like to have trust abused. I see it all the time and it has and will happen to me. It isn’t that I’ve stopped trusting people entirely - the process of trusting has just slowed down considerably. And I don’t know why that matters either.

Someone once told me that I was bad at dealing with change. Looking back, the thing that hurt me the most was I knew it was true.

I want this to be a time for me to reclaim. Reclaim myself, my identity, my voice, my strength. I thought I had created that second semester but in reality, I had built a just-useable shell of that person to help me get through my months at Pomona. And now that I’m at home I want that shell to stop being hollow, because its wearing away and leaving only the panic and anxiety that was my first semester reality/identity slap.

I want to reclaim my anger and my passions.

Anyone that knows me well knows how much it meant for me to read this in Sonja D. Curry-Johnson’s “Weaving an Identity Tapestry”:

“In college, conflicts did not lessen, but rather grew, both around me and within me. Here I had to decide what meant more to me, the attention and admiration of men, or my integrity as an independent woman. Unfortunately, there were times when my willingness to find and keep a boyfriend outweighed my desire to live my life honestly as my own person. During these times, I often placed the needs of the relationship over my own. It took a few years and a few broken relationships for me to reassess the importance of romantic love and to realize that there was no fantasy that was worth my denying any part of my identity. I decided not to become involved with a man unless I was sure he was the type of person that would not only accept my feminist ideals but also support my execution of them in my personal and professional lives. That type of man, in my mind, was a rare bird indeed. No sooner had I resigned myself to a life without romance, that I met such a bird and, in perhaps the least-debated decision of my life, married him.”

ahh female South Asian philanthropists…