Originally posted by: SmithaRam
Masala segment was completely unnecessary and weird, IMO. There is also no need to keep comparing with V’s behavior towards her every step of the way and display contrast. They could have shown the masala badboo on women who are uneducated and don’t bother about self-grooming differently.
Come to think of it, if you are smelling like onions/garlic, it can be off putting to a lot of people around you. They could have shown how Anuj coaches her to groom herself, get rid of the stinky clothes while socializing in public. If you are around your partner, know their preferences and tolerance levels. Afterall, even partners are different individuals with their own set of preferences.
V’s reaction to that instance where she smells like masala was drastic and wrong. Just because V yelled at her for stinking, they don’t have to put housewives on pedestal, equating her to mata annapoorna etc. Never elevate something higher than necessary to prove the alternative is lower. Life is not always a competition where men & women are weighed on a scale for everything.
Sam, my limited knowledge of hindi prevents me from doing full justice to appreciating your poems. Translating it ruins the original essence. But I get the gist of it. Kudos to you for always trying to put a comic spin to an otherwise mundane scene.👏
Apologies for usingyour thread to rant about my “masala” post.
Putting women on pedestals, comparing with Gods, etc is also another way of trying to box them into a standard template of societal roles and putting expectations on them that they need to behave in a certain way.
After all, a God cannot think of their own happiness or ever change themselves or take revenge but always needs to be above their disciples. We are a country which has the concept of devdasis for women
This is one of the worst things ITV does, making so called good people complete caricatures where they are people with unlimited goodness who can forgive the worst abusers, Gods who never have any desire of their own and can never change. Why would Gods care about happiness or appearance or smells? They are above normal human desires!
Also it's telling that all this deification and forgiveness and sacrificing for the greater good is 99% of time applicable to only women characters. Men are shown as just regular human beings who have regular human weakness and desires. Its clear that treating women as God is not a way to appreciate them but a way to force them to behave in a certain way and limit them, while men have all excuses to chase their desires and ambitions as normal human beings
Imagine this in other walks of life. Your child is consistently doing well in school without any complains, so he is literal Ganesh or Karthik God. Your daughter excels in sports and is dedicated so you compare with Hanuman jee and say sports don't get much appreciation so we are showing the comparison. You write big dialogues about how the pen's ink symbolizes the flow of time or something or how akhada's soil makes your daughter Dharti Mata herself
Ridiculous. These comparisons or flowery words will never make people do better in education or sports. So why will diefying housewife empower them or make their conditions better? It will just reduce them to caricatures, set expectations that normal women will feel they will never live upto but should be their goals
Its as harmful as a woman wanting to be a size zero model. Putting into young heads that this is the ideal woman, that they need to reach this unrealistic level of self sacrifice to reach this ridiculous goal. But here instead of sacrificing all calories and taste to attain an impossible physical perfection for others to use you and judge you and admire you, you are told to sacrifice all happiness and personal ambitions to achieve a ridiculous emotional perfection where you are beyond your own material desires, for others to use you and judge you and worship you
I think people would appreciate more if they show abused house wives standing up for themselves and stop being doormats to their abusers and families than being compared to forgiving, all sacrificing Gods with some ridiculous, forced metaphors
The former is true empowerment being shown - the woman who dares to put her in laws in jail, the woman who walks out of her wedding when the groom asks for dowry, the woman who choses her own life and happiness even after marriage, the woman who fights for her education and career - are the true role models for abused women in India
The later is just 1980s unrealistic drama lip service from the same country which has called women Gods for centuries but has been killing the girl child at unprecedented rates which show no sign of slowing down, has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world, and has one of the lowest % of women in workforce or even women stepping out of their kitchen and their homes without questions being asked.
Don't diefy woman and what they do. Instead empower them to make the choices they want for themselves. She doesn't cook because she is Annapoorna feeding her family miraculous spices. She cooks because she likes to and only when and for whom she wants to.
Edited by Harish111 - 3 years ago
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