By Aneesha Puri
No piece of garment generates curiosity and intrigue with such an accelerating pace as does the ‘bikini’ and the ‘burqa’, not only despite ?the overwhelmingly obvious disparity between the two but maybe because of it. So how is this bamboozle to be explained and analysed?
We live in a society which celebrates women by dichotomising and mythologizing them into either ?the hyper-sexualised? creatures of the forbidden fantasy world? or? the asexualised angels with no desire of their own. Either? they have too much sexual agency? or they have negated? their desire and now exist as passive recipients who require external agency to be acted upon them. The idea is not to ban burqa? by? calling it a patriarchal stricture on women’s mobility or to ban bikini for allegations of hyper-sexualising the female body ?but to make the whole clothing debate move towards an emergence of consensus which views it as contingent ?on the ?choice of the wearer instead of? allowing other external? factors to gain supremacy.
The whole patriarchal ?notion of excessive eroticisation? and de-sexualisation of women’s bodies? is symptomatic of? the mutually reinforcing concerns ?of desire and anxiety, hence the co-existence of prurience and prudery. What is desired is simultaneously the cause of anxiety and hence the patriarchal paranoia of female sexuality and the? carefully consolidated categories? of ?”respectable good women”? who are to be dealt with protectively and the “bad women” who can be violated and messed with.? ?The women on one side of the spectrum are pitted, judged and defined against? the other side depending on how they choose to attire themselves.
One half of women population obtain their self-esteem and pleasure by distinguishing? themselves from the other category.? So the conservative women see the women dressed “revealingly” as commodified ?and sexualised ?as a consequence of trying to? look ?attractive to the male gaze.? The women who choose ?to dress liberally see the women decked up in conservative attires as ?victims of patriarchal repression.? Moreover ??depending on? how women ?choose to conceal or reveal themselves apparently bear? a direct relation to their sexual morality. It is not hard to decipher how deeply embedded in our social fabric is this? fuss about women’s attire when? eyebrows are raised when? leading Bollywood ?actresses ?don the bikini and then have to ?justify ?the ?donning of bikini by saying that they had patriarchal blessings ( Read father’s approval), ?the most recent case being that of Sonam Kapoor in her upcoming movie Bewakoofian, ?who said that? Anil Kumar is unfazed about her bikini act. It is a pity that ?in this overpowering conundrum of convoluted arguments binarising? ?into ?ideological indoctrination of rigid patriarchal dictates? or ?the commoditisation of female body to cater to the male gaze,?the idea that the woman might have exercised her own choice in deciding to wear what she is wearing is not even a topic of debate.
Aneesha ?Puri? is pursuing her Masters in English Literature from Miranda House. A self-confessed book- ravisher , keen surveyor of? society and its ideological politics, loves deconstructing and decoding? anything and everything that even remotely concerns people, ?ranging from? celebrated, canonical literary texts to popular cinema and advertisements.? Her idea of utopia is a truly emancipated world which allows everyone, unfettered freedom to foster? his/ her potential to the maximum.
