Feminism and Chivalry

In the aftermath of International Women’s Day, with clarion calls for the rights of women echoing around the globe, I was moved suddenly to write about this.

Feminism is probably one of the most misunderstood notions in the world, mostly because of so many issues, this has been morphed and twisted to suit the vested interests of many people, all of who look at this in different ways. I, however, look at it as the general underlying equality between men and women. Regardless of many skewed opinions, feminism does not mean women are better than men and it does not entail a society that is matriarchal. How are we achieving equality then? Is it not just another version of gender-based discrimination? I am a feminist, and I will never hesitate to raise my voice at any incidence of misogyny and will perpetually hope to break these shackles that patriarchy will doubtlessly attempt to subdue me with.

Psychologically, according to Sigmund Freud, the Id which is the basis of all psychic energy that resides in our unconscious, and is a building block of one’s personality, is energized basically by the ‘libido’ – sexual and aggressive desires. An individual is inherently pleasure-seeking, so how can one’s body (asexuality notwithstanding) not need another, from the depths of the primal sexual pleasure driven urge that possesses all mammals, even humans? Secondly, and this is one of my pet peeves; when the so-called ‘true feminists’ indulge in what can only be called absolute contempt towards any woman who takes care of her body. This is irrational for two reasons. Firstly, this is an imposition of the true meaning of a way of life that honestly, no one should have the right to. Secondly, and more alarmingly, this is a declaration of how unconsciously we succumb to the hegemony of patriarchy. In an effort to prove ourselves as separate from, and superior to, men, there is an attempt to deny women the right to do whatever they want with their body. The same is true for any argument against slut-shaming.

Chivalry is defined as "courteous behaviour, especially that of a man towards a woman",  which ‘feminists’ seem to find offensive, because they believe this entails that the woman is dependent on the man, has no identity of her own and cannot function without his help. This is why, chivalry when expressed is frowned upon, and the woman who is ‘allowing’ it is dismissed as dependent and a blow to feminism everywhere. This is not true. Independence, in my opinion, involves the ability to be able to be self-sufficient and self-reliant definitely, but as long as this is effectively communicated to the man, it is also the freedom to enjoy being pampered, loved and assisted whenever one wants to be. If my boyfriend is paying for our meal at the end of a date, or is opening doors for me, this is acceptable as long as he understands that I can do the same without him as well. Probably since many women fail to communicate this efficiently, for whatever reason, or if the man refuses to understand this simple fact; chivalry transforms into the ugly face of patriarchy.

I honestly believe that feminism should not be a choice, for either of the genders. In a world where equality is becoming a forgotten norm, feminism should be as essential as food and water.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rajeshwari Dasgupta, a student of Political Science at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, is an avid reader, with a special obsession with dystopia and a surrealistic world-view. Her passions include music, theatre, petting her dog, and writing to keep herself sane.

From Rags to Riches : Why Leicester deserve a perfect ending!

It is not often that one sees a real life transformation of the often quoted "rags to riches", "zeroes to heroes" scenario, far less in such a short period of time, but Leicester City, who have gone from the bottom of the table in February 2015, to 5 points clear at the top of premier league table, look like they are destined to achieve their seemingly improbable dream.

To start it off Leicester have been brilliant. Many critics would still argue such a compliment is not justified, but the fact is that Leicester have been so close to perfect this season, that just brilliant will be an understatement.

Shinzi Okazaki

They have accepted their financial limitations, with Shinzi Okazaki their costliest signing, and have instead focused on building a team which clicks so well, you could hear it from south of London. A team built on pace, Leicester have been drilled  on the dharma of counterattacking, and they do it perfectly. The blistering pace of Jamie Vardy, coupled with the breathtaking Riyad Mahrez, has seen Leicester plunder in goals, against seemingly impenetrable defenses. And not just the celebrated duo upfront, Leicester's success has been its entire team's proficiency in almost all the departments.

Vardy and Mahrez, the lethal Leicester duo

In goal, Kasper Schmeichel  has produced brilliant performances. while not perhaps yet at the level of his father, he is certainly taking steps in the right direction. Robert Huth and Wes Morgan have been solid at the heart of Leicester's defense. Both of them are in their 30s, and fast approaching the twilight of their careers and they are not likely to beat anyone for pace. But they have used their experience and footballing intelligence brilliantly, defending deep, containing forwards, and making timely challenges.

Kasper Schmeichel

In midfield Mark Albrighton, Danny Drinkwater and N'Golo Kante have been revelations. The three of them symbolize the well drilled, hardworking midfield of Leicester, holding excellent positions, tracking back efficiently, and putting excellent forward balls.

Much of Leicester's success can also be credited to the way they do things differently. While most teams love possession, Leicester stand 18th on the premier  league possession charts with just a 41% average, and have based their game on counterattacks. Most team can't justify playing with 2 strikers, Leicester do it day in and day out, and as a result they are at the top of the Premier League scoring charts with 52 goals, sharing the position with Manchester City. The difference between the teams is a whooping 220£ million.

Most teams hate long balls. Leicester pop them forward at every chance, and more often than not, Vardy gets there first.

It would have been a tiny minority who would have believed a few months back that Leicester had it in them to continue their unprecedented flight at the top of the World's most competitive League. But now it would be equally hard to find a critic who has not been, for the want of a better word, touched by the impossible dream of Leicester.

Not bogged down by expectations, the foxes have soared, defying odds and breaking expectations. and now with 9 games to go and a 5 point lead, the League is theirs to lose.

The finishing line is in sight, and maybe, just maybe, the foxes deserve their own fairy tale.



About the Author :-

A passionate football fan and a Manchester United follower for a decade, this dog lover and foodie has the ambition of becoming a doctor. With the motto of making "The World believe in the power of written Words", Debadrit Biswas knows how to wield his pen as effectively as his stethoscope! 

Fat & Fate

Seventeen year old Sabeena is tall & fair. Her hazel nut coloured wavy hair flows open to her waist. Her light brown eyes elegantly compliment her pink chubby cheeks. Imagine her once in your mind. You see a pretty girl, right?  

Now I'll describe her more. She sings well & painting is her passion. Sabeena is a good student and a happy-go lucky girl who is always smiling. But something worries her mom about her. Sabeena's mom says, "My daughter is 17 & weighs 86kgs. I am worried."

Are you imagining Sabeena to be ugly now? Well if 'no' then congratulations if 'yes' then I insist, please continue reading.

Sabeena leads a healthy life inspite of being obese but what worries her mom is her wedding. Who will marry a fat girl?

"My relatives come home and taunt us. They blame me for feeding her. But the truth is Sabeena was born a healthy baby. As a teenager she eats less. I have still tried feeding her only boiled vegetables but tell me, which child would like bland food? I feel bad for her when her friends call her different names but somehow she has overcome it."

According to a survey, more than 70 percent of obese people reported being ridiculed about their weight by a family member.

You are obese & maybe you hate it. Even if you are not, you wouldn't like to be obese. You might cite reasons of unhealthy life for hating it but the fact is... every obese person hates it because of 'fat-shaming'. It seems to be a crime if you are over-weight. People taunt and make fun of you at school, college, office & roads.

 “All the time people go about mocking us. You are like the butt of all jokes" says Rajat Subhra Ta.

Why are overweight people judged so harshly?

Our society views thinness as a symbol of beauty, hard work, self-discipline and willpower. People who are overweight are presumed to be lacking these virtues. In one study shows, two in five women said they would trade three to five years of their lives to achieve their ideal weight.

 No thigh gap?

-You're ugly.

No toned legs.

-You're ugly.

No flat tummy.

-You're ugly.

Double chins?

-Yuck!

 While we admire zero-size in awe, let's wake you up and tell you that there are extremely 'beautiful' & successful plus-size models. Models like Robin Lawley, Sydney-based model didn’t just make history with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She’s also the first plus-size model star in a Ralph Lauren campaign, cover Australian Cosmopolitan, and be shot for the Aussie version of Vogue and GQ.

Being chubby isn't cool? You're not a swagger enough if you are fat?

These misconceptions flourish in spite of five decades of scientific research documenting the negative consequences of weight stigma and the fact that many causes of obesity are beyond the individual’s control. For example, genetics, economic status, hormonal disorder, depression, upbringing and the way parents talk to their children about weight all have a bearing on obesity. Every one out of five obese teenager who have been a victim of fat-shaming commits suicide.

A girl from Kolkata's one of the well-known colleges said, "I attempted suicide thrice when I was harassed on the bus by some people for being fat. They called me names and abused my dad. One person said that I should be carried by a crane. Another lady said that the conductor should take the triple of the actual fare because I was triple the size of a 'normal' person. My fault was just that I asked the woman to shift a little so that I could sit."  

“All of these manifestations of fat stigma not only hurt emotionally and psychologically—increasing the risk of depression, body dissatisfaction and low self-esteem—but they also contribute to the problem of obesity itself. Arguing “it’s for their own good,” some people use blame and shame in an attempt to motivate obese individuals to lose weight. We know this doesn’t work. If it did, as stigma increases obesity would decrease. Instead, as obesity rates have risen, weight discrimination has also increased by 66 percent in the past decade” says Carolyn C. Ross who is an expert in Eating Disorder research programme.  

Rather than focusing solely on personal responsibility, let’s tackle the bigger issue and work on changing the obesity-promoting environment. Rather than lecturing people about exercise, diet and weight loss, let’s emphasize more effective approaches because health comes in all sizes. Blaming the victim frees everyone else of responsibility, but with an epidemic as complex as obesity, we all have a role to play in prevention and treatment – and that includes not discriminating against people based on their weight or any other factor.

Probably half the world is unaware of the fact that you can be fit but fat too. This is all a game of BMI or the Body Mass Unit. Not every fat person is overweight or at risk with their health. The body mass index (BMI) has replaced the old height and weight charts as the most widely used tool to assess whether someone is at a healthy body weight. Both men and women use the same formula, a ratio of height to weight that helps assess whether they are underweight, normal weight, or overweight. Is being fat healthy?

Yes, you can be overweight and healthy, according to the National Institutes of Health's 1998 report, Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults.

People who are overweight can be considered healthy if their waist size is less than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men, and if they do not have two or more of the following conditions:

    -High blood pressure

    -High blood sugar

    -High cholesterol

Sabeena is also healthy. She has no ailments at all. She eats like a normal teenager, goes out for a walk, plays & exercises but she is still chubby and she does not regret it all. When asked about what Sabeena would like to tell the people who mock chubby girls, she said to EXPRESS MAGAZINE, "Don't repeatedly make us realise that we have extra flesh to our body. It's my body and I already know that. And for the people who call us cute or golu-molu, I would say do not compliment at all. It shows how you judge my body when you say so." 

About the Author:

Jaismita Alexander loves to write, eat, travel & sleep besides being an admirer of Art and Literature. She is also the Co-Founder and Editor of ExPRESS Magazine.  

 

 

Also read: 10 things only Maggi Lovers will relate to by Jaismita.

Do share this post if you are against fat-shaming. :)

The Three Foreigners and the Calcuttan

Sometimes in life, we need to take a leap of faith and not hold back. Weighing the pros and cons and plotting out the plan of action can only take us that far, in fact further away from the serendipitous moments of bliss from our lives. 

Yesterday was one such day. I was offered to come be a part of an experimental theatre group’s 14th anniversary, not just as an audience but also as a performer (I won’t be using names here because this is not meant to be a publicity piece, I’m writing down my memories and experiences here). But the fun part which I later discovered was that, the line between the audience and the performers would become thin and after a point completely break to form a harmonious synchronisation between the act, and life itself.

Now I was fairly sceptical of going ahead and joining the said event, because of various personal blocks and issues with other preoccupations. But somehow I managed to take the leap, put everything aside and go for it. And boy, I’m so happy I did.  Before the ‘performance’ there was a talk. Now, this talk, my goodness, this talk breathed in more passion into my bones than the past three years of college. The man had arrived from Germany with his lovely lady companion and they were here, spreading the virtues of living a life away from the traps of the modern day materialistic and capitalistic society that is slowly engulfing us. They called it, Free Spaces.

A PICTURE FROM THE EVENT

Now at the beginning he asked us all what we feel defines our personal free space. The handful of people that were there, sitting in a circle surrounding a montage of pictures lying on the ground from all over the world, all got busy defining their own free space. The old lady from Italy told us how she believes that the choices that we have in life must be utilised and we must go out and live in harmony; the Bengali woman in her mid-twenties spoke of how she considers her time with nature to be her absolute free space, when she can truly feel each and every part of herself tingling with life; the girl from Germany spoke about her own idea of free space where she envisions people living as a community with their own produce, so on and so forth. I could feel each of them vibrating with such raw energy and enthusiasm even though they were talking about this for the first time.
And it was my turn, and I said what I have always felt. That free space for me would be when we start understanding the poetry of life. There’s music in the universe. Hold your hands against your ears, close them and you will hear the silence, which slowly transcends to the music of the universe. The thrive in that music is our free space. To love without the confines of possession is our free space.

To speak without the constant fear of persecution is our free space.

A Representational image from the recent JNU fiasco

I couldn’t help but bring up the dire condition our country is in. How we don’t bat an eye lid before attacking people, how easy it is to divide ourselves into Us and Them, how easy it is to blindly shove down half-baked philosophies down our throats without questioning or being curious about anything at all. Because it is easy to just be. Because as long as we are getting our latest iPhones, drinking at the swanky new bar and updating our social profiles, everything else is just a matter of vague consideration, mild pondering and adept sweeping under the rug. Because nobody wants to get their hands dirty. And why must they? The government won’t pay for their manicures or branded clothes for that matter.

Navamita Chandra with Wolfgang Sterneck

But I digress. So this man, who later tells me how his name literally means the wolf’s path, sits down and tells us how he believes that humans should increasingly opt for living alternative lifestyles. He shows us these glorious pictures he clicked from all over the world where people are just living as a community in abandoned houses, which are nothing but a waste of space, painting the walls, forming their own libraries, growing their own vegetables and everyone is just helping one another out without the prospect of any monetary returns. The pictures are bright and beautiful and it doesn’t take long before my mind starts drifting somewhere far off.

It is true, as he said, everywhere we go we are being bombarded with advertisements, creating needs which were previously non-existent, telling us that we have to have a certain thing or somehow we aren’t really living. WELL THEY ARE ALL LIES. What we really need is seldom found within the glass walls of an upscale mall!

As always, my mind switched on the duality game. One part of me was perfectly convinced and the other part of me kept thinking, well it’s not very practical, our society has indeed grown in ways which has made us dependent on things we can’t do without, how living in small community clusters seems all happy and fun but what about the legal issues, the inevitable material needs, and blah and blah and blah. But what I realised was, there will always be a list of cons for everything we do. What we really have to focus on is the list of pros. And when that list outdoes all the other lists you know that there’s no two ways about it.

I had a lot to think about but time doesn’t run around in a whimsy like my thoughts (or does it?) and it was time for the performance. And I am choosing to not go into the explicit details of it because one needs to experience it and not read about it. The room full of candles, the handful of ‘audience’, the darkness, the silences nuanced by the strains of two half-forgotten guitars and the chimes from the anklet I had to wear, the captivating yet mellow wafts of incense, the ritualistic nature of the whole event, something about it all made me exceptionally heady and high. Poetry came to me out of nowhere, and it danced off my tongue, waltzing through my teeth, strangely befitting the show going on ahead of me. A foreign song, sung from the foreign throat of the lovey woman, and nothing else had ever felt so familiar to me. Lights on, in touch with reality once again, we all felt pretty vulnerable. Post lunch, I had turned on the tour guide in me and decided to take the three foreign souls, so enchanted yet scared of this lovely city of ours, to sit at the Lake, see the lights show and drink some "cha."

Auto, metro and then loads of walking and there we were. I can be without a doubt given the trophy for the worst tour guide ever because I had to ask for directions more times than them, but hey I have embarrassingly low spatial intelligence so deal with it. But once we got to the lake, everything was just as it was supposed to be. The lights were there, the cha came exactly when we yearned for it, the lights were there and the bats added just the right amount of eeriness. Before leaving he came to me and told me, ‘You know you can ask me whatever you wish to over facebook. I’ll answer it all. But for now, just know that money comes and go but following your heart will take you places." After a few hugs he left with his lady companion, who is equally invigorating and enigmatic. The other girl, in whom I seemed to have found such a soulful companion, stayed back for a while and talked more about a tonne of things that we had in common even after living half a world away from one another.

That night I came back home still high from the day’s events. I guess it was all that positive energy that I had come in contact with, that made me vibrate louder than ever in a long while. After a long long time, I faced no problems sleeping at night. It gave me immense comfort knowing that people like them are out there, making the world a better place, a simpler place, away from all the nonsense that we have been programmed to follow. Yes, it’s an utopia we are far away from, but an utopia we shall work to achieve nonetheless. It’s a dream many of us have slept through, but may be, it’s time to wake up to it.

A world where people don’t constantly try to pull each other down, a world where we all live hand in hand, singing the song of a home we’re destroying, the only home we can ever hope to have.
A world where humans realise that we are not living in the universe, we ARE the universe.

                 “Ami gaai, ghorey ferar gaan
                       uthola keno ey praan..”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :- 

Navamita Chandra is a student of Psychology from Loreto college, Kolkata. This passionate day-dreamer, vintage music maniac and devoted writer is also a reputed theatrician from The Dramatically Correct! 

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