Why Google's Women's Day Doodle irked me

Did you see Google's Women's Day Doodle or the Washington Post's list of ways to celebrate Women's Day? Neither represented my idea of Women's Day. Why is it that it is becoming attractive to celebrate Women's Day in a way that makes the majority of women invisible and subjects the rest to patriarchal denigration?

I apologise in advance for this post comes a bit too late. It was written on 8 March but has been published today because it was waiting for a few finishing touches!

Google Doodle for International Women's Day
8 March, 2012

Google's Women's Day Doodle irked me a bit. There was something wrong about its floral and colourful appearance. Not that I hate flowers or bright colours. I love them but how can they be representative of Women's Day?

I had an argument along these lines with a friend a couple of years ago. I noticed bright tulips on her desk on Women's Day. She told me a group of men had taken her and other women out for dinner and given them flowers because it was Women's Day. I found this celebration of Women's Day very bizarre. I mean, isn't this what happens everyday anyway - men take women out, give them flowers and pay the bill? How is that of any significance for Women's Day?


Nestled in its 'Lifestyle' pages, the Washington Post's list of 10 ways to celebrate Women's Day is equally odd. Though it does include protest as one of the way Women's Day could be celebrated, the list is unfortunately a bit lipstick-and-cupcakes heavy. Apparently, a marketing agency has initiated a 'Rock the Lips' campaign encouraging women to wear red lipstick to mark Women's Day. It's only as absurd as the Washington Post's suggestions 'Give flowers to women' and 'Eat a cupcake' to celebrate Women's Day.

Since when has feminism been about eating cupcakes and wearing lipstick? There's so much wrong with these suggestions and ideas at so many levels.

First of all, as a blogger points out, feminism is about 'power and politics and equal pay'. Lipsticks and cupcakes, as far as I understand, are not concerned with any of those. They are, instead, about having  'me-time' in a very consumerist and elitist way. Issues affecting women are much more significant (for lack of a better word) than deciding whether your clothes match your bag or if your lipstick goes with your skin tone.

For millions of women, issues of concern include scraping enough food for the day, getting to work without being sexually harassed and assaulted, ensuring they have a safe place to sleep in the night. In light of this, even the suggestion of celebrating Women's Day by wearing lipstick or eating a cupcake is, to use an extremely mild word, ridiculous, but also quite offensive for it trivialises the lived experiences of a vast majority of women, making them invisible. The majority of women, after all, do not have the choice to spend hours over choosing a bottle of pink champagne, the right shade of red lipstick and flowers that go with their home's decor.

Secondly, obsession over women's appearances (wear lipstick for Women's Day) and sentimentality/frivolity (give women flowers for Women's Day) takes us back at least a century. If ever there was an example of patriarchal celebration of Women's Day (as ironical as that sounds), this would be it.

Thirdly, such suggestions of celebration of Women's Day undermine the political significance and history of feminism. They deliberately gloss over issues that feminists have worked hard to bring to mainstream attention. They subscribe to a postfeminist propaganda that believes (or likes to believe) that women have achieved equality and can have it all. Further, putting women in corsets and high heels to celebrate Women's Day not only reduces women to their external appearances but also takes the focus away from their political projects. It is the market trying to hijack Women's Day from feminism.

Such a celebration of Women's Day is not only classist but also sexist. For me, Women's Day is an opportunity to revisit the relevance of feminism, to celebrate the achievements of women's movements and to assess how much progress (if any) has been made so far. It is also an opportunity for cross-cultural and international dialogue on women's issues, to learn from each other and to renew focus on action.

Opposition to public breastfeeding is sexual hypocrisy*

(c) http://www.whale.to/

There is much opposition to breastfeeding in public, especially in Western countries. However, the lack of a similar opposition to sexual exposure of breasts in the media and other public spaces betrays the sexual hypocrisy that feeds this revulsion.

10 random reasons I am a feminist

Today, being the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, is a good time to introspect and think about why I am a feminist. I don't know whether I should be happy or sad about this - it was really easy to come up with 10 reasons for why I am, and should be, a feminist.

For those who are exasperated with my feminism, in short - I am a feminist because I believe men and women should have equal rights, because I am angry at the everyday discrimination women face all over the world and because I want to rescue feminism from what it has been made out to be by anti-feminists.


(c) Jay Morrison

'Facebook rape' - Insensitivity toward rape or de-stigmatisation of rape?

Facebook raped or 'fraped' is part of a rather new (Facebook specific) terminology.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, the term 'Facebook raped or fraped' is defined by Urban Dictionary as 'the access of a Facebook account by a third party, unknown to the account's owner, which alters and adds humiliating or otherwise derogatory words to the account's profile for the purpose of a prank. The act usually takes place between friends after one leaves their Facebook account logged in'. Examples would include statements like 'I am coming out on fb - I am gay!' or 'My brother is right - I am a dumbass' or 'I smell like feet' etc.

One of my friends recently expressed her astonishment and disapproval at this public and frivolous usage of the word 'rape', a grave crime/act of violence. Surely this usage reeks of insensitivity? Doesn't it show how lightly rape is treated without any concern toward more than 250,000 cases of rape or attempts to rape every year (and the figure counts only the reported cases)? Well, I thought so too. At first.

Modern communication, sexual politics and Indian women

It's not unusual to read contradictory news stories about India for India truly is a land of contradictions. And its contradictions do not just run at the simplistic level of rich versus the poor but in all of its nooks and crannies, in almost all of its veins.

This week I came across two interesting articles/news stories - one in the Independent about how 'independent, career-driven, female singletons are the driving force behind a new publishing phenomenon' in India, namely, the growing demand for Indian chick lit and the second one in the Washington Post about the banning of cell phones for unwed women in an Indian village for fear of these women arranging 'forbidden marriages' and elopements via the cell phone.

Both the news pieces apprise us of the growing communications industry in India - be it the publishing or the telecoms industry. And this growing communications industry is coming to shape and define Indian women's sexuality, albeit in often contradictory and multitudinous ways.

On the one hand is the increasingly independent career driven urban Indian woman whose ultimate goal or topmost priority in life is no longer getting married, having a comfortable home and three children. On the other is the often not-that-well-recognised rebellious rural woman who wants to indulge in pre-marital romance, who wants to take her life decisions in her own hands, who refuses to bow down...and yet is mostly trampled upon in one way or the other - beaten up, murdered, forced into marriage etc.

Not that the two categories are unitary or solid, but roughly they do give us an idea of the wide and far reaching effects communication technology has on women in a developing country like India. It wouldn't be wrong to assert that Indian women are much more affected by and are more responsive to technological changes in the field of communication as compared to Indian men.

While newer means of communication have equipped Indian women with the tools to express themselves, not only literally but also figuratively, they have also, at the same time (and inevitably so) , got entangled in the web of sexual politics where men regulate women's accessibility to and use of communications technology and through it, their sexuality.