We Want Women To Be 'Role Models' But Don't Want To Create Safe Spaces For Them

Role Model Women: With our women athletes bringing in medals for India at the Tokyo Olympics, the mood of the nation is high. High on many fronts - from jubilation to sexism. The dialogue running online has quickly turned course from hailing our sportswomen towards slut-shaming others.

Olympic winners PV Sindhu, Mirabai Chanu and Lovlina Borgohain are being called "real feminists". So basically, according to trolls, only women who bring tangible recognition for the country are women worth reverence. The rest, especially those involved in the film, arts and entertainment professions - have been deemed 'immoral' and anti-culture (whatever that culture is) - and thus are not deserving of either dignity or value. Wonder what would the trolls say, if one of these women goes on to win an Oscar in future though...

If what trolls spew was anything to go by, no woman could be lauded for her achievements without another woman taking an indirectly proportionate blow that drags her down.

No matter the choice of role model women people choose to idolise. Notwithstanding sexist justifications that range between getting a "girl who can do both" to "picking medals over glamour. Nevermind the cheer for a Deepika Kumari and simultaneous attacks on a Deepika Padukone.

The sad fact remains - whichever female icon we choose to pick, neither they nor we are living equal existences. Because the identity of our gender, and the systemic oppression that comes tagging along, binds us together in shared miseries. The thing is that people want women to behave in a model way, but could care less to create a model society for them to live in.

Our Ideas For Role Model Women May Vary: But Must Sexism Seep Into The Conversation?

Can a film star say she can walk alone at night feeling safe on the streets? Can a sports star, take one who won a mighty Olympic medal, say she will live a life without a world of domestic burdens in exchange of her achievements? Can you - if you are a woman - claim to be truly unshackled from patriarchal dictates?

Social media is quick to commend the women who fit their (often sexist and communal) ideal standards of virtue and condemn those who, by their own biased perceptions, are outraging cultures. What netizens fail to recognise is how toxic gender hierarchies come into play either way.

Does choosing Sindhu as an icon of empowerment over a Kareena Kapoor Khan smoking on-screen mean the former is being accorded great regard by men? Possibly not, because this adulation is aggressively male-gazed. The patriarchal narrative will come for her sooner or later.

Besides, every single woman commands respect and dignity, she shouldn't have to bring home an Olympic medal to earn what is her birthright anyways.

Our Role Model Their Role Model pic.twitter.com/m3phAZ0bkl

— Maarwadi🚩🚩🚩 (@Marwadi99) August 1, 2021

Khan is already massively villified - for an interfaith &t=7s">marriage, for the name of her children, for being outspoken, for her profession. Meanwhile, Sindhu, who sticks to the game and is renowned almost singularly for it, hasn't stirred similar 'controversy.' But for all the admiration coming her way now, will Sindhu be held in high regard also when (if) she makes a statement or acts against the values gatekeepers of morality in the country hold?

Being women, for them as for us, is akin to walking a tightrope. One step out of line, and everything we have secured - worth, respect, dignity, status - comes crumbling down. That is the price women, all of us, have to pay for being women. Level the ground for us and watch us all come shining through as role models.

Views expressed are the author's own. 

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