We were not designed for patriarchy Featuring Anindita Ghosh

It’s a strange business being a woman. Everybody has an opinion on our bodies. Self- proclaimed “stakeholders”. People who decide what we can wear. What size we should be. How long our skirts and tops should be. What kind of character, what measure of objectification should be applied, what level of discomfort should be assigned with the body. Decent. Indecent. Fat. Thin. Big boobed and therefore HAS to be slutty. Flat-chested and not at all desirable. Dark skinned and manufacturing defect. Fair skinned and superior. And then there’s us going through evolutionary cycles of hunching backs at adolescence, pulling down and hiking up skirts like tides responding to the waxing and waning of a moon of rebellion, expressing, censoring, brazening, shying, detesting, overcompensating, not caring, scarring our way through figuring out the relationship we have with our bodies. Until the day we finally, hopefully, arrive at the grace of acceptance. And turn our beautiful, conch-shaped ears to the music within and turn deaf to the so-called “stakeholders”

We were not designed for patriarchy. Anti-abortion laws. Laying off pregnant women. Higher cut-offs for girls in colleges. Skirts that must fall below the knees. These don’t happen just because men wake up one day and decide these things. It happens because we relinquish our power readily. Because some woman is still feeding, bathing, loving, praying for, keeping his hearth warm. We put away our battle axe and took up a skillet. But then again, a skillet can be a worthy weapon. Here’s to finding our power again - whether we choose to wield a battle axe or a skillet.