Eyes up here, please

I used to be an avid watcher of that old-time (wow! Doesn't it seem truly old-time now?!) sitcom - F.R.I.E.N.D.S. In one episode, Joey asks the girls - 'how do women manage to get anything done? I mean, they are right there!' He was referring of course, to breasts.

This morning, I happened to see the cover of a women's magazine that my mother subscribes to (yes, I am specifying that it is my mother's magazine, not mine) and was quite taken aback. It showed an elegant woman, beautifully attired in a saree, hair cascading carelessly down her shoulders as a baby blissfully lay in her arm, suckling at her bare breast. It is a revolutionary image for Malayalam media - bold, beautiful and arresting. The headline in bold exhorted men to look away and leave women to breastfeed their babies in peace. It was all quite riveting. Until I glanced into the magazine and saw an interview with the cover model. The only words I read were the highlights given in bold: I am not a mother. I am not even married. I felt sick to the core of my stomach. So a magazine that is encouraging women to forget about being stared at as they feed their babies the nutrition that Nature has provided for them could not find a single mother who could model for their cover? If there is no young mother in Kerala who wants to make a point by openly breastfeeding her baby - as legislators have been seen doing in Parliaments in Australia, Brazil and Iceland while simultaneously going about the business of running their countries - what was the point of this feature? Who exactly was the magazine fighting for? 

Brazilian Parliamentarian Manuela D'Avila breastfeeds her child as she raises a point in the National Assembly

Curiously enough, the starting point of their discussion - a mother whose picture of her feeding her baby without covering up was posted on Facebook by her husband - was right there in the inner pages. A genuine mother who genuinely believed in the cause. Stood for it. Campaigned for it. She was not enough to grace the cover? So what really was the genuineness of this cover picture and the loud message below it? Excuse me, Grihalakshmi, but in my mind, you have just lost all credibility and all good intention with this. You grabbed eyeballs. You almost made a point. And then you screwed it up. Because that point at which you decided to push a real mother actually breastfeeding her child into the inner pages and portray a model holding a baby to her bare breast on your cover is where you delved into cheap sensationalism and exploitation. It was doing what advertisers have been doing for decades - grabbing attention by displaying a woman's breast. In a society that does not consider even a breastfeeding mother exempt from unwelcome glances, you blatantly sexualised a mother's breast for publicity.

If I had to answer that question that Joey asked his friends, this is what I would have to say: women are not as concerned about their breasts as men are. We do not carry the burden of life and death in our bras. We do not bear upon our chests any answers to the questions that plague the Universe. We do not think about our breasts as often you do; our fascination with them is not as compelling as it is in your minds and in popular culture. 

The thick paper folder held close to the chest during college days; that dupatta tightly pinned to the kurta on both shoulders; that holding of the palm to the neckline while bending low to pick something off the floor; that constant tugging at the shoulder to ensure your neckline is not going too low and the bra straps are not showing - it is all stuff we are conditioned to do from a young age by our mothers who want to protect us from unwanted attention and worse. Left on our own, I don't think we would ever pay that much attention to them. As a first time mother, there were many challenges, I faced - but the one time I really lost it perhaps was when I was - in all good intentions - reminded to pull up my neckline as I struggled to hold a baby in one arm and a bulging baby bag in the other. See, at that point, the last thing that bothered me was that my cleavage was showing and some insignificant-excuse-for-a-human-being would leer and therefore had to be shielded from the sight of them. Plunging neckline? If you have a problem with it, deal with it, morons! 

I remember seeing a forward on Facebook once - it showed the picture of a girl holding her palm to her kurta's neck as she bent forward to offer coins to a temple offerings box. The caption (in Malayalam) read,"When a girl does this, she upholds the honour of her father, her brothers and her husband." I wanted to throw up, Quite literally. What made it worse was that this skin-crawlingly-cringe-worthy post appeared on my timeline because it had been shared - by a girl! I can only pity the virtuous soul who believes the honour of the men in her family resides in her bosom and the thousands of men who had 'liked' this picture, agreeing likewise (while considering any woman who is not your mother or sister as fair game).

Every woman has a sense of pride in her body. As much as she makes her face look pretty in a manner she believes makes her look her best, so too she dresses her body in a manner that she believes makes her look her best. That is her privilege. And only hers. How much that measures up to anyone else's values/expectations/morals is their problem and theirs alone. No kingdom comes crumbling down at the sight of an exposed bra strap and no mighty God falls at the sight of an exposed cleavage. Time to move the sights up, guys. Morally, physically, attitudinally. 

I remember once in my old workplace, one of my young teammates,  was making vain attempts to pull up what was a structurally gravity-prone neckline. She was obviously self-conscious and distracted until finally, one of her male teammates laughed and said, 'forget it, will you? There is nothing there we haven't already been seeing for the past five years.' I was shocked for an instant (I am still old-school, ok?) until the girl herself laughed and gave up struggling to adjust that truant neckline. We all got back to the business at hand. Which had nothing to do with anyone's cleavage. The point is, life is not always about what lies beneath one's clothes. Sexuality is a private part of your existence that you choose what to do with. And when. And with whom. In every other context - whether a woman is breastfeeding, going about her business, going to school or college, going to a temple or sweeping the courtyard - there is nothing sexual about her or her breasts. At least to her. So leave it at that. And let the breasts be.