MOVE TO WORDPRESS.

Dear Friends and other kind viewers,

Because of several issues with blogger I have moved my blog to wordpress. I've imported it so all the old stuff is there as well.

This is the link : NEW WORDPRESS BLOG. 

Please come see. 

It only took one glance at my father, humming as he drove, tapping the steering wheel to know how plastic my young life was compared to his. I wish I knew Delhi back in the day.

Some of the best days are when my dad is in town and telling us 'abbe! zindagi hai yeh zindagi. Tough hona padta hai.' No school like the old school.

Stuff from my freelance job. Laziness and cowardice from staying in the city for too long led me astray from full-time permanent work. This one is about advertising and blatant sexism. 

Last year there was a great outcry about Clean and Dry, a vaginal cream launched across India by Midas pharmaceuticals. The cream promised vaginal fairness and ‘freshness’ in four weeks. The advertisement showed a sad doting woman, sulking as her husband drinks coffee and reads the paper (Fact: women never read the paper, but simply watch). Then Clean and Dry comes to her rescue, and lo and behold, in a second she is jumping on cushions and her hair is flying in the wind. Her husband of course, is unable to resist this new version of his wife, and takes her in his arms immediately. The news can wait. These days, an ad for Magic Bricks —a real estate company is doing the rounds. The ad shows a family at a ‘milan’—a meeting where a marriage is to be arranged. When the to-be bride shows herself coyly, the father of the groom comically asks, ‘aur koi option nahin hai’. To this, the girl giggles, completely ignorant or amused at her commodification and comparison to real-estate property.    

Only when Ford released pictures of gagged women in the boot of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's car did we realize the high case for gender-based oppression that advertising makes. Indian Television is the showcase for ads that are constantly oppressing women and categorizing men. Women are shuffled between the roles of the Mother and the Madonna, and men are usually suit wearing, shallow creatures whose impressions of their spouses change with a switch in shampoo. Capitalism needs grounds that encourage consumerism. Sexism and rigid categorization of gender roles helps the consumer economy thrive, telling an individual that in their lives as man and woman, they must be a certain way and must procure certain things. Good housewives must buy good detergents, good girlfriends must have the right shade of lipstick, and good husbands and boyfriends must have a perfect suit and a fast car. This specification makes for a profitable market, as an individual will constantly invest in consumer goods to fit suitably into his or her roles. Advertising unquestionably is a loyal product of the patriarchy and agent of competitive capitalism.

Fortunately, Clean and Dry received much criticism and was condemned for its ludicrous impositions on women’s standards, unlike some of its other colleagues. A change in the attitude of your lover, husband, and partner is a favorite theme of contemporary beauty products. In her book The Beauty Myth, American feminist and critic Naomi Wolf makes a comparison between the contemporary beauty ideal and a medieval torture device called The Iron Maiden. The device enclosed its victims into a spike lined box shaped like a woman, and like the beauty ideal, forced women into a rigid shape, causing suffering and even death amongst its victims. Cultural media like cinema or fashion introduce the ideal woman. It tells women that fat is ugly and dark is unacceptable. It shows us a tall, slender, and flawless woman and makes her the norm.  Advertising monopolizes on this and shows us the apparent path to the created norm. They suggest that impossible standards of fairness and weight are reachable, and introduce women advertising products who seem real or ordinary. Ads for coconut hair oil suggest that if your hair is long and shiny, you will experience a joy equal to that of running free-footed on a beach. It tells you that if your skin is free of scars and pimples, you will be a successful T.V anchor. These themes are endorsed by Bollywood idols, who smile on screen telling ordinary women that they could look like them. Anushka Sharma dazzles her boyfriend with fair underarms, Kareena Kapoor with obviously fake shining hair, Bipasha Basu with digestive biscuits. Ads for beauty products create a beauty ideal that is almost unreal, using style and glamour icons as their emissaries.

The advertising industry, since its birth in America in the 1920s—the starting point of consumer culture has dedicated itself to the fabrication of insecurities. “The eyes of men...the eyes of women judge your loveliness everyday”, warned one of the earliest ads for Camay soap. The industry dedicated itself to creating discontentment, which was key for consumerism to repeat itself every day. Even today, women are told that they are automatic participants in this beauty contest of life, and they are presented with a list of purchases so they do not fall back.

Today, Asia is the largest market for beauty products, especially fairness creams. The youngest user of fairness creams today is 12 years old. India’s obsession with fairness as a virtue, as a necessity for beauty has resulted in the market for fairness creams and bleaches touching a figure of Rs 2,000 crore. This aspiration to fairness can be seen as a colonial hangover, an aspiration to look like the west. Fairness creams neglect the actuality that Indian skin is usually dark and establishes the superiority of a whiter shade. Though one may argue that these demands are equal for men and women, it is important to note that though there are fairness creams for a man, he is also allowed into other realms. Into business, cars, real estate, and almost anything else that he wishes. For a woman, advertising makes one rule, that she must be beautiful. To be that, she must be fair. Ads for fairness creams by companies like Ponds and Fair and Lovely show young insecure girls. Fairness creams come to their rescue and magically plant confidence and happiness. In no time these young girls are singing, dancing, and fighting politics.

Apart from driving women towards high and rigid standards of beauty, the other place that the ad world places women is in the role of the housewife. The Indian housewife is the most seen figure in ten-minute breaks. Ads for household products show beaming mothers feeding their children, and devoted wives washing their husband’s shirts. The Indian woman apart from object of desire, is only otherwise seen in the kitchen. It is assumed that a man does not wash a dish or sweep a floor, but all household chores belong to the woman of the house. Though it is true that the market for household goods is housewives, it must be remembered that gender stereotyping through the times has resulted in this statistic.

In 2010, an American Super Bowl ad for Doritos showed a woman with her shirt unbuttoned appealing for her boyfriend’s attention. The boyfriend was watching sports and eating chips. (fact: women don’t watch sports. Or eat. except when foods are nutritious or low fat). The boyfriend pays no heed until the woman strips naked and covers herself with Doritos. Now the boyfriend cannot resist her and dives into the bed full of his girlfriend and Doritos. This ad illustrates how advertising also uses women’s bodies to sell almost anything. Ads for men’s products are incomplete without a skimpily clad woman as a prize.  In India, the ads for Set-wet deodorants that promise crooning women after one spray follow the same pattern. Companies like Go-daddy.com, simply showcase women in bikinis, and make absolutely no correlation with the product. The ‘aamsutra’ ads for Slice that exhibit a seductive Katrina Kaif have hit the jackpot, using blatant sexualization to sell a product that has nothing to do with it. In his Ways of Seeing, American theorist and critic John Berger writes, “[Advertising] proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer – even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.”In ads for men, women are part of these riches. Men are told that after buying a particular product, you will have confidence, style, nonchalance, and guaranteed, a girl by your side.

One may excuse all this by stating that ‘this is how it is’ or ‘this is what sells’. But both Capitalism and sexism have flourished on such excuses made for them. Everyday, we wake up to see that girl on T.V and wonder why we don’t look like her. We look at billboards and notice that everyone on them looks the same, but not like us. We are told that our skin has room for improvement, and we must take care of our body. Advertising creates a world that plays on these insecurities. When it tells women that beauty is first priority, it forgets to tell her more important things. Like striving for adventure, happiness and meaning, or being intelligent and kind over being skinny and fair.

If everyone woke up one day and was content in being themselves, the economy would be shot through the heart. 

But I think it would be worth it.

....

There's also this, if you care.

Apparently there's a fine line between being persistent and pushy, but to me they just seem the same. But I'm trying to be persistent. I hope it works out. 

I hate it when people talk matter-of-factly about being in love. Like they know exactly how it should be. And then they measure it and blame it and say some really dumb shit that devalues it. Because though I don't believe that it's all of that Empire state building Tom hanks kissing meg ryan in the rain bullshit that America has tried to pull with the world, I know it exists. But like everything else it changes and evolves with every person/animal/shoe/song that you love. I don't understand how the most universal emotion of all, the most complex and definitely the most profound has been put into this one little bottle that everyone seems to be drinking out of. I don't get how it's been reduced to this one formula that everyone seems to think they must master. I know it exists because I have known it in moments when I've looked at someone's face and wanted to crush it because I like it so much or when laughter is easy and colors are brighter. I just think it exists in this sort of space into which two people stumble and suddenly everything is just SO COOL and eventually they might, or might not stumble out of it. Or maybe the space erodes, or collapses. And and though that might seem painful and tragic, it really is okay. Because painful and tragic is important and also, why must be everything be a prospect to something that constitutes and defines your future.

Sometimes my friends make me really annoyed and it if wasn't that it was on Whatsapp I would've broken something on their noses.

I just want someone to come to to me and do something that is both cliche and unexpected, like the stuff that you have imagined that you want someone to do but no one ever does. Like climb a tree to prove a point or drink your drink in an effort to be smooth. I wish things were generally more endearing. Everyone just seems to be stuck in spaces of massive inhibitions and insecurities (myself included) and nothing ever feels free.
I was going to apologize for being self important but I shouldn't, because whoever is reading this is doing so by choice. And I am tired of all of us laying ourselves bare on the internet and growing increasingly scared of being judged. The irony of being able to share in mere seconds but that only leading to further anxiety is rather sad.

I used to really want to play the mouth organ.

Also
....Listening to Chet Baker in the dark can make you feel like you are in a prolific sort of place.