Bare truths

Why is it okay for Lena Dunham to go topless; but Miley Cyrus is a slut for showing her breasts?

Do you understand the new feminist take on female nudity? No, me neither. Let’s start with breasts. It seems that the world is divided into Good Breasts and Bad Breasts, depending on who is revealing them, and why. So, when Lena Dunham, the star of Girls, drops her top at the slightest pretext to show off her bosom, it is supposed to be A Good Thing. But when Miley Cyrus takes off her top to writhe around a Wrecking Ball in a video by the same name, that is A Very Bad Thing indeed.

Now, how exactly does this work?

The sub-text, insofar as I can glean it, is this. If a woman who is judged unattractive by the cookie-cutter standards of the glamour industry, bares her breasts, then she is striking a blow against the standards of the beauty business. She is showing that she does not subscribe to the normal perceptions of beauty or sex appeal. That she has the self-confidence to show off her own body, even though it doesn’t meet the standards set out by the Sex-Appeal Police. And in doing so, she is giving hope and courage to other less-than-perfectly-proportioned women like herself. So, that’s Lena Dunham sorted then.

But Miley Cyrus? No, no, no. A young and pretty girl like her has no business stripping off for a music video. If she does so, she is just falling into the trap set by the music industry and commodifying herself for commercial purposes (and we have everyone from Sinead O’Conner to Annie Lennox lining up to tell her that). This kind of behaviour makes her no better than a stripper or even a prostitute. So, if she wants to retain the respect of the world, she really needs to put them away – and sharpish.

Not that it’s just about Pretty Breasts vs Ugly Breasts and the mile-long cleavage between them. It’s also about what I like to call Fashion Breasts, which are perfectly fine viewing in expensive glossy magazines, and Porno Breasts, that are meant to titillate men who flip over anxiously to Page three. Again, Fashion Breasts are good: they are an aesthetic appreciation of the female form. But Porno Breasts are bad: they demean women everywhere (hence the feminist protest against the Page Three girls of The Sun).

Well, I am sorry if I am being dense, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. Are we really going to judge female nudity on the basis of what feelings it brings forth in others? Is male arousal, or the lack of it, going to be the benchmark by which we decide which woman is allowed to go topless and which one isn’t? Are feminist values now going to be decided on the basis of the Male Gaze?

And then, there is that little thing called the ‘Slut Walk’ that rears its politically-correct head every now and then. I am sure you have heard of it. Maybe you’ve even participated in a few. And no doubt, you have your own ideas about it. Well, I have been grappling with the concept, so allow me to share with you what I have gathered so far.

Mini-skirts, bikini tops, spaghetti straps, bum cleavage, breast cleavage is all good so long as it is being revealed by women who are participating in something called a ‘Slut Walk’. This is – stay with me here – good because women are demonstrating that they are entitled to dress any way they like without being judged for it. They are, they argue, reclaiming the word ‘slut’ for themselves. And in the process, they are shaming the men who tell them that they get objectified, harassed or raped because of what they are wearing.

So far, so good. I can get on board with the broad sentiment though ten hours of sustained water-boarding couldn’t get me to ‘reclaim’ that nasty word (slut) for myself. But hey, ladies, if that’s what rings your bell, knock yourselves out.

But once you’ve gone on the mandatory Slut Walk, and stood up for your right to wear sexy clothes, stop complaining when scantily-clad women are used as sexual bait to sell everything from ice-cream to motorbikes. If you can dress that way to make a point, these women can dress like that to make a living. (And no, nobody is pointing a gun at their heads; they are doing so of their own free will.)

We cannot live in a world where it is okay for women to bare their breasts so long as they remember to do it in a politically-correct and feminist-approved manner. If a woman can revel in her sexuality on a Slut Walk, she can do so on the floor of an ad film as well. You can’t celebrate the one and pour opprobrium on the other.

If we are going to make any sense of feminism, we need to be clear on our principles. If we believe that every woman has the right to walk down half-naked on the street – as they do on their Slut Walks – without the fear of being molested or harassed, then we cannot take away the right of other women to bare these breasts on Page 3 if they choose to do so of their own free will. If we applaud Lena Denham for baring her breasts on her TV series, then we can’t shame Miley for doing the same in her music videos. The principle can’t change on the basis of whom it applies to; or it isn’t much of a principle at all.

The Dress Code

It really doesn’t matter what you wear; you can be a feminist in both a sari and a skirt

Women and clothes. It really doesn’t get more complicated than that. There’s conflicting advice coming from every corner. Everyone has an opinion on what you should or should not wear (and where you should or should not wear it). There are people who seem to believe that your choice of outfit has a direct connection with your personal safety. But no matter how much care you take to dress every morning – or evening – you can rest assured that there will always be someone out there who believes that in those clothes, you are simply asking for it.

As for me, all through my life, I have tended to take the path of least resistance when it came to clothes. Growing up in Calcutta, where I went to a school and college run by nuns, there was a certain assumption that ‘good girls’ always dressed conservatively. And quite frankly, I never had a problem with that. I wore salwar kameezes and churidar kurtas routinely and felt incredibly grown-up whenever I wore a sari on special occasions.

Looking back, I often wonder why more of us Loreto girls didn’t rebel against the unspoken dress code that even outlawed something as tame as pedal-pushers (if you have no idea what these are, consider yourself lucky). My guess is that it was mostly because we never really paid that much attention to what we wore. We didn’t see clothes as a means to making some sort of political statement. And I most certainly didn’t think that they defined who I was in any manner.

Clothes definitely did not make this woman, I would have said if I had given any thought to the matter. But quite honestly, I never did. I had more important things to think about (like when I would finally get through the interminable James Joyce opus; and why I could never keep all the characters in War and Peace straight in my head).

After college, I began working at the ABP group, which – in those days at least – was a bastion of orthodoxy. All the women wore saris to work (only one lady with a particularly racy reputation would wear tight kurtas with trousers, which was regarded as the height of daring) and I duly took my cue from them before relaxing into the odd salwar-kameez and finally graduating to that old journo standby, blue jeans.

However I may have dressed on my time off, at work I always veered towards the line of sartorial safety. I would no more have worn jeans and a T-shirt to cover an election rally in a rural area than I would have worn a bikini to an official banquet at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The idea was always to blend in, to seem non-threatening. If I was going to be the proverbial fly on the wall, then I had to be a cipher, nondescript enough to disappear into the background. I couldn’t be that girl in a Bermuda shorts, who thought she was striking a blow against patriarchy by showing off her legs.

But then, these are choices that most women of my generation made, because we wanted to be taken seriously – and we had bigger battles to fight. So, we wanted attention to be focussed on our brains rather than our bodies. And we wanted the conversation to be about our talent and professional abilities rather than our clothes.

I guess we’ve come a long way from that (er, baby, as the sexist Sixties line would have it). And in a way it is comforting that we now take enough of our freedoms for granted to finally be able to have that conversation about clothes. At some level, I suppose it must be seen as a sign of progress that women are all charged up to fight for their right to wear a mini-skirt and not be leered at.

But speaking for myself, I still find the idea of a Slut Walk risible in the Indian context, when women in rural areas who are wrapped up in six yards of fabric get sexually molested, assaulted and raped every day. And call me sexist if you will, but I find it hard to sympathise when women complain of being leered at after putting their breasts out on display in their latest push-up bras. Hell, there are times when even I gawp in horrified fascination at those acres of cleavage on display, so I’m not one to point fingers.

When it comes to clothes, though, I think the common-sense argument is the most compelling one. Of course, you can wear what you like. Of course, you can go where you like while you’re wearing it. And of course, nobody has the right to molest or rape you because of the way you’re dressed. But there is such a thing as ‘appropriate dressing’, and we would be fools to deny it just to sound politically correct. For instance, I still wouldn’t wear a short skirt to a political press conference. And I certainly wouldn’t wear a skimpy top while reporting from a rural area.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that clothes are really not that important. Because what you wear is not who you are. So, let’s not make the mistake of believing that our identity is wrapped up in our clothes. It is possible to be a feminist in a sari as well as a skirt – and we should never forget that.

Better late than...

In India, time is an elastic concept – get used to it

Last Saturday, on the eve of Delhi’s Slut Walk, I was invited to participate in a BBC Radio programme to discuss the issue with one of the organisers (who shall remain nameless for reasons that will rapidly become clear). So, I duly turned up at the studio at the appointed hour to meet the thoroughly charming Akanksha Saxena, a researcher for the BBC, who was going to coordinate the chat between Delhi and London.

She led me to the studio, sat me down, explained the process, and then we settled down to wait for the other guest to arrive. Ten minutes passed. Another five went by. The producer from London called up to ask what was wrong. We are still waiting for the second guest he was told.

Another five minutes ticked past. Akanksha finally called the lady in question on her mobile. “Oh, I’m just five minutes away,” she announced airily.

So, we waited. Another ten minutes ticked past. London called again, the producer sounding abjectly apologetic about making me wait. Another call was made to the lady. Mysteriously, she was still five minutes away.

And then, a good 48 minutes after the appointed time the Slut Walk organiser finally walked into the studio and the discussion began. It lasted about 20 minutes, which was less than half the time that we had been kept waiting.

But what struck me most after the event was not the discourtesy inherent in making so many people wait while you casually saunter in nearly an hour late. What made more of an impact on me was how resigned and philosophical Akanksha and I were about the delay as compared to the two Englishmen on the other end of the line in London. They were absolutely mortified about the fact that one of their guests was cooling her heels in the studio and couldn’t stop apologising. But as Indians, we regarded this sort of behaviour as pretty much par for the course (though that’s not to say that Akanksha didn’t apologise as well!).

But that’s the honest truth isn’t it? Time-keeping isn’t something that we take at all seriously in this country. Everybody regards an appointment as an approximation and turns up pretty much when they feel like it. And no matter what, if you call up to ask how long they will be, the answer invariably is, “Oh, I’m just five minutes away.”

This somewhat cavalier attitude to time is apparent in other areas as well. Try and get some repair work done in your home. The contractor will assure you it will take two days at the most. Two weeks later, the workers will still be driving you insane with the noise they make. Order a new piece of furniture in a store. The salesman will assure it will take two weeks tops to deliver. Of course it will be two months before it actually arrives at your door-step. Call in the electrician/plumber to deal with some crisis. They will assure you they will be there in the next 10 minutes. Consider yourself lucky if they turn up even three hours later.

There is a word for this sort of behaviour. In most civilised societies it would be called lying. But we brush it aside as just one of those things – even standard business practice. After all, you’re not actually supposed to take somebody seriously when it comes to time – by now you should know that in India it is more an elastic concept than an absolute measurement.

Perhaps that accounts for the fact that people you know only professionally think nothing of calling up on your mobile at 10 pm to extend an invitation to a dinner or ask you to attend a fashion show or a book event. And when you don’t take the call, they call again and again and again – until you’re forced into putting the damn thing off just to get rid of them.

Turn the phone on again in the morning and you’ll find that you have a dozen missed calls from them, between the hours of 11 pm and midnight and 7-9 am. Task them with being rude and intrusive and they will act as if you’re the one who’s lost it. After all, what does it matter what time they call; you’re still awake right? Then why can’t you take the call?

This sort of elemental discourtesy and disregard of time extends well into our social lives as well. I defy you to organise a sit-down dinner in India and actually have people sit down to dinner at the appointed time. When you finally corral them into a restricted space, confiscate their drinks, and physically guide them to their chairs a good hour or two later, 20 per cent of them will remember they have another engagement and decamp, another 20 per cent will announce that they can only stay for the first course, and another 10 per cent will simply get up and leave before dessert can be served on the grounds that they’ve stuck around long enough.

And then, there’s the other extreme. You arrive at a dinner party at what you consider to be a reasonable time (i.e. an hour after the time specified on the card) only to find that you’re one of the first people to turn up. Slowly the other guests will trickle in, get stuck into their liquor and canapés, and dinner won’t laid out till well after midnight – by which time you’re longing for bed rather than biryani.

As I said, time is an elastic concept in these parts – get used to it.

Slut Walk? No thanks!

There are better ways of standing up for our freedoms than parading around in small, tight clothes

Okay before we get into all this ‘Slut Walk’ business, let’s get two things straight.

One: a woman’s right to refuse sex is – and must remain – undisputed. It doesn’t matter what she is wearing; how she is behaving; how much she has been drinking; why she came back to a hotel room with the guy in the first place; or even, why she allowed him to kiss and fondle her.

If she wants to say no – no matter at what stage in the proceedings – she has an absolute right to do so. And any man who ignores that is guilty of rape.

That is something that we are all agreed upon: Yes means yes; and no means no.

Two: Rape is never ever a woman’s fault. Never. Ever. Okay, let’s say that again. Never, ever.

It doesn’t matter if she is provocatively dressed. It doesn’t matter if she is walking down a rough street alone. It doesn’t matter if she is drunk. It doesn’t matter if she is out late at night. It doesn’t matter if she is sexually active. It doesn’t matter if she is ‘promiscuous’. It doesn’t matter if she is a sex worker.

No woman ever ‘asks’ for it. Never ever.

But my question is this: do we really need to parade our streets in small, tight clothes to reinforce these two messages?

In case you have been living on a different planet for the last month, this is how it all began. A policeman in Canada suggested that “women should avoid dressing like sluts” in order not to be victimised. This led to widespread outrage and a world-wide movement to reclaim the word ‘slut’ for women who wanted the freedom to dress the way they wanted.

Women organised Slut Walks all over the world, during which they walked the streets wearing short skirts, bikini tops and the like to assert their right to dress provocatively – and to reinforce the message that this did not justify rape.

Well, duh, of course it doesn’t. But if you ask me, all this ‘slut talk’ (not to mention Slut Walk) seems to be missing the point somewhat.

Let’s assume for a moment that a woman has the right to dress like a porn goddess if she so desires. That she has the right to cavort in public all day long, dressed like that. And that if the men around stare and leer or treat her as a ‘sex object’ then they are infringing on her right to dress any way she pleases.

Now, let’s turn it around. Let’s also grant men the right to display pornographic images wherever they please – at work, at home, on public transport – because, well, they enjoy looking at them. Let’s allow them to crack dirty jokes all day long or make sexually explicit comments because, hey, they love doing that. How long do you think it would be before the ladies start complaining?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. So, let’s take a step back and allow men to put their own flesh on display if they feel so inclined. They can whip off their shirts at the office; show the crack of their bums on the streets; and go dancing in nightclubs sporting just their underwear. Yes, I agree, it won’t be long before the women start crying foul.

So, what we are effectively saying is that women have the right to sexualise their environment if they feel like it. But the men around them must do nothing of this sort – for fear of being dismissed as Neanderthals and hit with a sexual harassment action for good measure.

Double standards, anyone?

Let’s look at this another way. Let’s say you decide that it is your right as a law-abiding citizen to leave your front door unlocked when you go out. Is this likely to attract the attention of your friendly neighbourhood burglar? Probably. Is it more likely that you will be robbed as a consequence? Of course.

Does this mean that the thief who robbed you is not guilty? Of course he is. Does it follow that you bear no responsibility for what happened? Of course you do.

You turned yourself into an easier target because of your actions – and you have to take the rap for that. Every choice we make has consequences; and we have to keep those consequences in mind every time we make a choice.

So, no one is denying women the right to dress any way they feel like. But if you dress to be noticed, then don’t complain when you are noticed. If you dress to attract attention, then you must be reconciled to the fact that you can’t control what kind of attention you will attract. None of this can be used as a justification for rape – but yes, freedom does come with responsibility.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how the best way to target a woman was to attack her sexuality. And one of the words thrown around by such people was, yes, you guessed it, ‘slut’. So pardon me if I see no reason to adopt the word as a badge of honour rather than slam it for the sexist abuse it is.

And hence, I say to all the ladies who have been sending me invitations to participate in the Delhi Slut Walk: Go take a walk if you want to. But I’m no slut; and I will be damned before I ever refer to myself as one.