WS 8 Collective blog

 An Indian fashion student wore the traditional Indian attire on the streets of Milan in 2021. A headline worthy story here was of a male student wearing a sari and bindi to represent his culture. ‘Breaking gender norms’ as many famous news platforms called this story. In the recent times when many celebrities and ‘influencers’ are have taken up the mantle to challenge gendered clothing, saris too have become a site to contest ideas of masculinity and femineity. The ‘traditional Indian women’s attire’ seems to be joining the androgenous fashion trends. While the questions like who drapes it? Or how it is draped? do challenge the ideas of gender and ‘Indian’ culture, it leaves out one important area where gender norms can be questioned – men behind sari making. The process behind the production and sale of saris is a tedious one which includes mostly men at the decision-making stages. The process of sari making involves several steps from spinning, weaving, dyeing, and more that inv...

Perfume as a commercial product is heavily categorized by gender – flowery, fruity scents for women; woody leathery scents for men. Perfumes are gender assigned because marketing products through gender binary is an effecting strategy of perfume brands for making profits. Marketing leverages the stereotypes of perfect man/woman. Sex and attraction have traditionally played an integral role in perfume world.   These strategies work because perfume is both a functional product as well as an aspirational lifestyle product. In recent years beauty and fashion industry has been influenced by gender neutrality. Unisex perfumes have been in market for some time now (since the launch of CK One in the 1990s). The popularity of unisex perfumes is gradually increasing. This is due to the greater awareness of public with regard to gender identity issues and to changes in the stereotypical perception of masculine and feminine attributes such as smell. Perfume companies advertise and market uni...

The etymological skill of a speaker is their insight/capacity to create or perceive meaning. Nonetheless, the phonetic capability isn't sufficient to seem OK. One requires the information on the social shows of a specific culture to make meaning. Since language is exceptionally reliant upon the way of life around it, it is in many faculties a performative goes about too. The sexual orientations are hence impacted by the language they talk. I might want to examine the interrelation between orientation and language and what the two reciprocally mean to one another. It is never a dull chance to survey and repeat the requirement for a feminist change, however, there is even more motivation to do it when the greater part of the populace has hit a respite, and we have adequate time to burn to think about how our general public has been molded, as though of course, in male-driven ways. Regardless of some advancement, the arising worldwide agreement is that genuine change has been tortuous...

  In last part I talked about how culture of convenience has managed to engulf the marriage system. There is again this thing which has been in practice since ages called “bio-data” for marriage. So basically it’s like profile of individual who wants to venture into ‘marriage market’ to find ‘suitable match’ with of course ‘terms and conditions apply’. So just other day when I was having conversation with one of my friend who was not aware about existence of such thing known as bio data (I guess it is more famous here in Maharashtra) she was like what is it that you people do make a pamphlet of characteristics of person who wants to get married then what pass it on to all available and willing buyers who are constantly there keeping an open eye for some new entries into marriage market? Actually I didn’t correct her that no, passing on of this pamphlet is extremely limited and bounded by certain parameters which are highly normalised by our society to the extent that in expectation...

  We have seen how tea became a household identity for Bengalis and how they have a passion for tea or 'cha' in their day to day life. Now we will see the passion and love for tea outside one's household. In Kolkata, if you roam anywhere in the streets, you will find tea stalls remarkably standing and showcasing their cha skills. Their commercial advancements come with their skills in making various kinds of tea on the stalls. As it has been mentioned in the earlier entry that cha variety in tea stalls is many. There are ginger tea 'ada cha', lemon tea 'lebu cha', milk tea 'dudh cha' or masala tea. The kind of tea they are selling is not the glamour of their tea stall but instead, the glamour resides in the customization of the tea according to their customers. The customization depends on the tea types. As it was already mentioned in the previous entry, how long tea leaves only belongs to liquor tea and dusted tea to milk tea, sometimes a combinatio...

I was in conversation with my relative. She was telling me about stories in Ramayana and principles in the Vedas and how they all have "scientific significance ". I was reminded of what we studied in class in relation to Gnyan Prabodhini and other institutions and how it is an endeavour to make scientific something that is getting frowned on for being too narrow and religious in today's day.  This is similar to what efforts the HSS (Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh) takes in the USA, to redefine Hinduism in one's favour and for one's own redemption. It is an effort to rewrite the narrative and appropriate it through a new lexicon of science as it also makes it even more impossible to question something that is "scientifically sound". The claim is that these ancient texts mention the technology that was not known to be available at the time. Hence they are made out to be "advanced and beyond their time". However, we know that it is a common occurrence fo...

सर्व साधारण पणे जेव्हा आपण कोणताही कला प्रकार बघतो तेव्हा त्या कलाप्रकारामध्ये केवळ कला नसते तर त्यासोबत आपले विचार , तत्त्वं लोकांपर्यंत पोहचवण्यासाठी देखील वापरला जातो . त्याच बरोबर सामाजिक , राजकिय व्यवस्थेचाही कलाप्रकारांवर परिणाम होत असतो . आपण एक कलाप्रकार म्हणून मालिकेचा विचार केला तर एकच एक प्रकारची मांडणी दिसुन येते . जो समाज सत्तेत उच्च पदावर आणि प्रबळ असतो त्या समाजाने तयार केलेल्या आणि घालुन दिलेल्या चौकटींमध्येच ते कथानक बसवलं जातं .   मराठी मालिकांच्या बाबतीत बघताना असे दिसून येते की , मालिकेमध्ये जी स्त्री पात्रे दाखवली जातात किंवा जी कथा घडताना दाखवली जाते ती सध्याच्या काळातली progressive content असणाऱ्या मालिका समजल्या जातात किंबहूना असं बिंबवलं जातं . त्या मालिकाही ह्या पुरुषप्रधानव्यवस्थेचा प्रभाव असणाऱ्या पार्श्वभुमीवर आणि त्याच परिप्रेक्षात घडत असतात . मालिकांच्या प्रक्षेपणाच्या वेळा जर पाहिल्या तर असेच विचार ठासवणाऱ्यामालिका ह्या prime time मध्ये दा...