Feminist Film Time: The World Before Her By Nisha Pahuja (2012)
The documentary follows two very different bootcamps taking place: a Miss India pageant, where experts guide Indian women how to be modern, sexual, and hone their beauty. The other is Durga Vahini (VHP’s wing for women, sister franchise of the Bajrang Dal) which aims to incorporate strength with traditional values and cultural purity in young women.The Miss India camp will feel familiar to a lot of us oldies. Back in the day, Miss India was a pretty big televised event preceded by a ‘making of’ show of sorts that would air on Sony (?) Tv. I think I subconsciously imbibed a lot of the things Sabira Merchant propagated about diction, poise, and (performative) femininity. But it was also quite horrific to revisit how young girls were pumped with botox and fillers (this was 2010s, mind you!) And “skin lightening treatments” for a more “symmetrical” appearance to adhere to arbitrary, euro-centric beauty standards. Here was a pageant meant to celebrate being an Indian woman, but the women were being judged on their proximity to whiteness.
Under neoliberal capitalism, ‘gender performativity leads to commercialisation of hyper femininity and ultimately female sexual objectification’. (Mari Ruti). So on one hand, while the pageant offers a way out for young, urban women to gain more footing in the world and perhaps even financial emancipation, it comes at the cost of agency over their own bodies…A typical day at the Durga Vahini camp starts at 4am. There is focus on physical training. One of the instructors, Prachi, expresses her disdain for girls who are too feminine and thus perceived as physically weak. The girls (all aged between 15-25) are trained to ward off physical attacks…so far so good. The idea is to instil discipline at an individual level so it translates to discipline at a familial and ultimately societal level as well. There’s a snippet on a lecture where the leader points out the sexual commodification of women in the west. She uses the example of beauty queens like Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen endorsing cosmetic brands that encourage thousands of young girls to buy the products too. But ultimately, the money goes to a foreign corporation. So in a sense, the corporation is ultimately the one profiting off of women’s beauty aspirations…But then the lectures devolve into maintaining the purity of Indian culture and how that onus falls on women. Women had their roles in society thousands of years ago, and the role remains the same even today: to serve, to sacrifice, to be as “ideal” as one can be. There are clips of women being assaulted, attacked and harassed for seemingly innocuous things like being in a park with a man or at a club for drinking alcohol. Yes, the latter did happen. We read about them in the papers. Women were attacked for being in nightclubs. It was scary to watch actual video footage of the kind of barbarity with which men attacked these women. Is it in our culture to literally beat women into submission when she chooses to embrace “westernisation”?
Prachi declares that she is an only child and was raised as a girl but also a boy. She feels different from everyone else; has no aspirations to marry and birth children. When asked by the interviewer what her goal in life is, “hardwork” (parishram) she says, her duty is towards the organisation (Durga Vahini). Back home, her father nonchalantly declares that she has to marry. It is just a matter of time. “Have you asked her what she wants?”, when prodded by the interviewer, he promptly declares that it doesn’t matter. It is her duty to marry. A woman is only complete when she births a child. There is a visible discomfort and disdain on an otherwise cheerful Prachi’s face. She requests the interviewer to change the subject..At a later time, away from her parents, the interviewer asks Prachi if she feels angry when her father hits her. She seems to hold a lot of anger in her body. “But he let me live”…Pooja Chopra, the reigning beauty queen looks back at her growing up years and the kind of support she received from her mother, a single parent. Her father was abusive towards her mother and left when she was born. He could not handle the birth of yet another girl child. Her mother vowed to him that the child because of who he abandoned the family, would go on to be someone. She did. To many it’s just a pageant, but for women like Pooja a Miss India crown comes with a sense of pride in proving her own father wrong. That she has, in fact, amounted to something in life.Then it cuts to a clip of Marc Robinson, the pageant director, putting a cloak on the contestants’ faces/bodies for a photoshoot because his “vision” is to “see beautiful, hot legs”. “Escape from the Taliban” one of the (masked) contestants joke. The scene is jarring and unnerving as the women parade down an outdoor runway and are photographed. “Are you going to spend your whole life chopping vegetables (onions)?” Asks the instructor to the young girls at the DV camp during a session on how to use a firearm. “Doodh doge, kheer denge/Kashmir mango, cheer denge” “Bharat mata ki jay!” Are some of the slogans being raised. The justification for teaching young women how to competently use a weapon is so they can be prepared to counter attacks by terrorists, especially consecration of temples and holy places, if the time were to ever come. A young participant proudly proclaims that she has no muslim friends. When she was younger, she had befriended a muslim girl in school once. But she didn’t know any better at the time, she does now. She is learning and is a work in progress still. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day! It is this very hateful rhetoric that has slowly but surely eroded the roots of our society over time. The constant subjugation of muslims, then Dalits, and now women…we are seeing in real time how this playbook has been used by our government to not just divide and rule, but strip us of a life of basic respect and dignity. On graduation day, the Durga Vahini girls are excited. They look forward to wearing their saffron sashes, similar to the ones worn by the contestants of the Miss India pageant. Chinmayee, one of the graduates, hopes that her family will be proud of her now that she is a ‘tigress’. Dressed prim and proper with their sashes pinned firmly in place, the girls parade the streets of the city with extensive sloganeering like “wake up hindus” and “mark your foreheads with blood and welcome your enemies with blood”. These are children, wielding swords and revolvers and rifles…Children. “We have learned how to use guns and we will use them…to kill people (enemies)”. Back at the Miss India camp, it’s finally d-day. The girls are painted and pruned to perfection. A coke addicted, mediocre nepo actor springs one of the contestants with a googly question. What would she do if her future son came out to her as gay? “I would be shocked and probably slap him. But later I would probably think that if he chooses his sexuality as gay then I guess I would have to come to terms with it and accept his choice”. Some of the judges look visibly uncomfortable. It doesn’t help her cause as she adds, “as far as I am concerned, I prefer to be straight”.15 years later, I’m curious to see if the contestant has since learned that sexuality isn’t, in fact, a choice.
As Prachi and her family watch the Miss India contest on television, her mother compliments one of the girls. She looks simple, with the way she walks and smiles. It’s a graceful thing to say about a young girl. Before this a contestant is asked what our mothers can learn from us. She answers rather eloquently that our mothers can dream still, maybe sometimes through us. Prachi’s mother has an undeniable spark in her eyes as she looks at these young girls, perhaps vicariously living through them.“This is vulgarity, is this our culture? ”, exclaims the father. He is shirtless, the women are in evening gowns. The irony is severe. The film ends with Ruhi, one of the aspirants, returning home heartbroken. But her family has been incredibly supportive of her journey, and are proud of her regardless. There will be many responsibilities in the future. A marriage and kids. But for now, she wants to live for herself. She wants to enjoy her youth. Prachi is asked how she feels about ultimately preaching the very things that are used to control her, strip her of her own agency. She says that it is her duty to teach the next generation of girls about their duties. It doesn’t matter whether she fully believes in these ideals or not. What else is a girl to do…
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