Is she a supermodel? No. Is she elegant? Not really. Is she rich? Famous? A star? No, no, not particularly so.
This woman can wonk policy.
Last year, Arati Prabhakar was appointed director of the National Institute for Standards & Technology. Prabhakar is the first female NIST director ever, and the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech. She oversees a $500 million budget, tripling in three years to $1.4 billion. Her mission: to help American high-tech companies regain their international competitiveness. Meanwhile, teenager Sushmita Sen won Miss Universe.
Who is more respected in the Indian American community--the director or the debutante? The bureaucrat or the beauty queen?
I hit this year's Mr. & Miss San Francisco-India beauty pageant to find out. (I know, I know, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.) It was a distinctly desi pageant, running on Indian Standard Time. Parents brawled over whose daughter was prettier. Male contestants strutted around pumping iron in public while imbibing backstage. Tall, skinny, long-haired and light-skinned women stressed about their talent routines. It was no surprise that the women took the pageant more seriously than the men. After all, beauty pageants exemplify South Asian gender roles.
Indian American culture is far too focused on gender. Like our gendered languages, we lead gendered lives in which every step, every option is determined by an accident of birth. In the same way that we politicize our culture by calling people "un-Indian" or "whitewashed," we also genderize it by telling them to act like "good Indian girls" and "good Indian boys." We pressure people to fit the female/male gender roles of orthodox Indian culture, which are limiting to both sexes and grossly unfair to women. These same gender roles interfere with understanding and communication between IA men and women. This has created a chasm of cross-cultural communication--in essence, a gender gap.
Physical beauty is an important ideal in Indian femininity. Recently, my parents were looking at photos from the S.F. beauty pageant and, like the judges, explicitly picked out the most innocent-looking women. It's no coincidence that my parents concurred with the judges. What was really surprising was how traditional the women finalists seemed. The women who won sang bhajans (religious songs) or danced to Hindi film songs. Some wore nose-rings and dressed as barefoot village women carrying waterpots. Others put flowers in their hair and carried plates laden with prashad and deep (food and ceremonial candles). Missing from the top five were the tightly-clad women who performed a hip-hop routine and a risque "Choli ke peechhe" sequence. By displaying a hint of sexuality in their routines, these contestants had overstepped their traditional Indian female roles. Parents in the audience muttered mutinously that the contestants weren't "acting Indian."
The female beauty pageant winner wore a pure white sari as she was crowned. The image invoked the asexuality of Indian widowhood, a fitting reminder of the sexual double standard between IA men and women. In stark contrast, the male winner recited a poem called "Why I'm Not a Good Indian Boy." No woman could have won after reciting such a poem. Beauty pageants place women on a pedestal, traditional, idealized--and limited. Traditional Indian women, pageants make clear, should be beautiful yet innocent, adorned yet inexperienced, attractive yet abstinent. There is a tension here. There is a conflict.
There's a cultural preference for female innocence and, by extension, virginity. One of the greatest fears Indian parents have is of their daughters acquiring a reputation for promiscuity. And that's why for IA women, unlike IA men, being "bad" is immediately associated with sexuality. Let's face it--Indian families are far more concerned with their daughters' sexual behavior than with their sons'. Sons are frequently allowed to date or to stay out late while daughters from the same households are not. Women's brothers see no contradiction in dating freely themselves but forbidding their sisters to go out with anyone. This protectiveness would be touching if it weren't so thick-headed.
Despite all the homilies from the cultural guardians, the double standard has nothing to do with morality, pregnancy, or physical safety. If it were about morality, sons' dating behavior wouldn't be tolerated with a wink and a smile. If it were about pregnancy, parents would discuss contraception with their daughters instead of keeping an embarrassed silence. If it were about physical safety, parents would teach daughters self-defense and personal caution just like they teach defensive driving, instead of banning dating and social outings outright.
When stripped down to its barest, most subconscious form, it's all about power. Men want to dominate women, and what makes men most insecure is not being able to control female sexuality. Parents are well aware that female virginity commands a premium in the marriage market. Men have no such restriction; many an experienced bachelor expressly, hypocritically, demands that his bride be a virgin. At a visceral level, Indians--both men and women--are squeamish about women controlling their own sexual behavior.
Indian culture goes further than sexuality when it defines what it means to be a good Indian woman. The traditional roles say that women should be smart, but not smarter than men. Many of my intelligent women friends feel they have to play down their intelligence to attract men. Several of them are having their arms twisted to marry right out of college. These are bright, articulate young women who would rather go to grad school. Moreover, Hindi films frequently do so little character development for heroines and so much for heroes. Women portrayed in Indian popular culture are beautiful but giggly, and they rarely challenge men. Our cultural messages are consistent, although consistently unjust: Indian women and women are forever separate and unequal.
How foolish that separation is. One of the ultimate ironies of the traditional Indian gender roles is that, although they strive to keep chastity on every cherubic mind, they accomplish quite the opposite. The segregation of the sexes is so complete in some parts of the community that every female-male friendship is assumed to be sexual, every interaction is viewed through the filter of gender. And, due to the fear for reputation, rarely do IA men and women become close friends. At IA get-togethers, guests clump along gender lines. IA's frequently seem emotionally immature, unable to understand and accept platonic friendship between women and men. It's a perversion of values that these friendships become difficult; it's a perversion that the platonic part of our lives is defined by the sexual. If chastity were the objective, repression is clearly not the answer.
Thus, traditional Indian gender roles deny women and men the skills for understanding each other and for healthy romantic relationships. They have opened a mighty chasm between IA men and women. Sociologist Deborah Tannen argues in her best-seller You Just Don't Understand that men and women have such different conversational styles and approaches to life, they are like different species. You have to hang around enough people of the other gender to understand them. And that means that men and women need to be friends. Female-male friendships are the foundations for healthy romantic relationships, which are dry-runs for healthy marriages. Indeed, so many arguments I've witnessed between Indian couples seem rooted in gender differences rather than personality. Our culture's purported attempts to keep sexuality from becoming a big deal have backfired.
On the contrary, sexuality has become a very big deal. Our culture prevents parents from giving their children the most rudimentary education about sexuality and relationships; inhibits many men and women from becoming friends; casts IA's into the arranged marriage market with little experience in compatibility; and cuts off intergender communication which is vital for healthy marriages. It is a far cry from the Indian ideal of innocence; the current state of IA gender relations smells more like complete ignorance.
Sujatha Baliga wrote in "Looking like a feminist" ( hum, Spring '94) about an Indian male's refusal to believe she was feminist. I don't look like a feminist either. That feminism is perceived as inappropriate for men speaks volumes about the prevalence of the traditional gender roles. The Indian masculine ideal is accepted with a wink and a smile. It's difficult to challenge roles ingrained everywhere. Being Indian, male, and aligned with feminism, I get little respect. My mother refuses to consider the possibility that I could have an egalitarian marriage, equating it instead with a female-dominated relationship. When the subject comes up, my long-time male friends are suddenly more sexist than I believed--and see nothing wrong with it.
Why are we so afraid of female sexuality? For all the subtle eddies in Indian manhood which disparage women, we don't seem to be men enough to deal with them. Men who follow unquestioningly the sexist aspects of Indian culture are not men. It takes no manhood to be victor when the dice are loaded. Real men do not need to dominate women. Real men can be friends and lovers with strong, free-thinking, independent women.
We must move towards emotional androgyny--where men and women are complete human beings. We must understand each other as people rather than as one-dimensional women or men, that insufferable "opposite" sex. Men ought to be to be understanding, sensitive, and caring. Women ought to be intellectual and reasoned. We cannot afford to relapse into our insecurities and pull our practiced gender roles around us like a filthy old blanket.
Some argue that gender roles cannot change without weakening our cherished families. I agree, the closeness of Indian families is wonderful. But it does not and should not depend solely on the women in the family. Surely we can achieve the same closeness of family without carving it entirely out of women's lives. I'm willing to cook sometimes. I'm willing to help around the house, to raise my own children, to share decision-making rather than claiming authority by virtue of gender. This is called weakening the family? I think not. I think it's being considerate of your spouse. I think it's strengthening your marriage.
I don't want to raise a daughter in a culture that tells her she's less of a person than a son. I don't want to raise a daughter in a family where her achievements and self-worth are constantly assaulted because of her gender. If it damages the sexism in a culture, so be it. If it shatters traditional beliefs in the absolute superiority of men, let them break. If it transforms a familiar, comfortable, but grossly unfair culture into a just and strong hybrid, let's hasten that change.
It won't be easy, it won't be familiar, and it definitely won't be comfortable. Change rarely is. But we've wrenched ourselves out of our ancestral homelands once, for economic prosperity. Another wrench, another shudder, another quake is needed--this time, for emotional well-being. Together, women and men can bridge the gender divide.
Good show, Ms. Prabhakar. Good show.
