I had already begun writing this piece that day. I was on my way home on the Metro, and being the observant journalist (read harmless eavesdropper) that I am, I listen in on four young girls playing ‘Heads Up’ or modern day charades. One member uses gestures and irrelevant phrases to describe the word open in the app, while the other has to guess correctly. The app keeps tab on the score.
Suddenly one of the girls goes, “Ooh, the place where you’d find your mother all the time” and the other screams with delight, “The kitchen!” High fives all around and they move on. But I don’t.
It troubled me, maybe more than it should have, that these girls find it completely OK to say or feel that that’s their mother’s only place to be — all her waking hours in the kitchen. Maybe she is a chef, maybe she loves cooking; but nothing about the way it was said was objective.
I am not a diehard feminist, I tell people. But is that such a bad thing to be? The word ‘feminist’ has always worked against the thought and ambition behind it. Definitions, protests and endless debates — enough to befuddle any woman or man who identifies as being a feminist. Therefore, I don’t presume to be one, but I endorse what it stands for — equality and respect.
Some people vehemently oppose feminism, calling it unreasonable, but fail to understand that feminism is not about glorifying women who make a living out of endless drama or provocative selfies. Feminism is about saying that it’s her choice and not anybody else’s. Feminism is about not having a checklist of things a woman should or should not do, love or hate. It is against all the simple things and the complicated ones that being female seems to mean to others.
More often than not, it is other women who are the protesters. Maybe they don’t think women deserve that kind of freedom, or maybe they don’t know better. A woman asking another with horror as to why she wouldn’t get married before 30, or a woman judging another when she decides to work nine hours a day with a three-month old, well-cared-for, baby at home. That is the anti-feminism I want to fight, for all those women who think they shouldn’t have the luxury of choice.
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong culture and country to advocate feminism. There are, of course, many inspiring women from my country, India, who are staunch feminists — but the lack of reach and respect that they command means I am not quite in their league.
Everything suddenly seems to change as I cross the border into India or at imaginary borders right here in the UAE. Suddenly my mum is saying I shouldn’t speak so loudly or explaining to others as apologetically as she can that her daughter cannot cook. I cannot cook up a gourmet meal, but I can survive and feed one mouth or two. Not because my mum was bad at her job (sigh) or I was less disciplined, but because I don’t like cooking and I was busy studying so I could earn a living doing things I love and take care of my family.
I am a proud daughter, and if you tell me that my parents should only retire when my baby brother — aka the son, the male heir — can support them, expect a broken nose. My love, my life, my rights, my successes and my choices are not less important than yours because of my anatomy.
Back to charades, the place I find my mother the most? In her white nurse’s coat, saving premature babies for 25 years and counting. Feminism is only as successful as the women it stands for; teach your daughters that a game of charades is all that is required to make or break a spirit.
