"Asian women never usually answer back!" Part II

Happy New Year to whoever it is reading this post; turns out we survived another "end-of-the-world" prediction. Shock, horror! Who’d have thought it!?

For those of you who read my previous post, this is a follow-up and is part of a series looking at the perception, attitude and personal view of south Asian women in general.For those who haven’t, here’s the link to Part I - have a read. 

I have decided to dedicate a part of my blog to writing about certain circumstances that south Asian women tend to face. To begin with, it was my fiery response to the atrocious ordeal which has recently occurred in India. Then I realised that there isn't really a place (that I know of) where these kinds of things are actually discussed in regards to south Asian women regardless of age, faith, background, nationality etc.  

Recently I sent out a little quiz about the representation of south Asian females in the media. The results I got varied but in general they were along the same lines.  

In numerous south Asian households, there's an abundance of TV channels such as Star Plus, Zee TV (and its other names), B4U, Sony, Life OK, Colours etc. There's loads, and more keep emerging specially tailored for various ethnic groups in south Asia.

Brown people are not just brown people; there's variety within and boy do we highlight this!

In my family, my grandma and dad regularly watch various shows on Star Plus and the odd Bollywood film. 

I watch them sometimes (we all get lumped into at some point!) because it's how I learn Hindi due to the subtitles.  My younger brother calls it: "hell time" and safely runs upstairs to avoid weekday evenings. Why? Because from 7pm - 9:30pm Star Plus takes over and there's nothing we can do about it. 

The one thing that I can credit these TV channels is that at least they teach people Hindi, Urdu etc because there's a lot of south Asian kids in the UK, USA, Canada etc who don't know their mother tongue. So in that sense, I guess they're keeping a big part of south Asian culture alive because language is a crucial part of heritage. 

Nearly all of the south Asian soap operas (dramas etc) take place within the family home and dramatically document family life. Normally the setting is an impossibly huge, palatial manor with sweeping lawns, private driveways where a random guard is posted, private drivers on call and the rooms are en suite. The floors are marbled, large pillars dominate the hallways etc - the families are more or less super rich (but we never find out what they actually work as lol). 

Now to the family members: there's a grandma or grandpa, mother-in-law, father-in-law, sons who each have their own wife, a random aunt or two, little children who are quite annoying and maybe a family pet. It's a big, extended family and despite there being so much space in this stately home, they always get in the way of each other. 

It wouldn't be south Asian soap opera land without the dramas and struggles of various characters - it's always in the lives of the female characters. Typically the mother-in-law (saas) will have a problem with her daughter-in-law (bahu). AKA: the "saas-bahu conflict". The clingy mother usually never approves of this new women who have stolen her beloved son's heart and does anything to make her life a misery.  And when the two actually get along, the random evil aunt decides to step in with her wooden spoon to stir. 

But I'm not here to write about that. I'm here to write about the presentation of the females in such shows which seemingly grip a large portion of the south Asian community. 

From the survey I sent out, the main issue that kept on popping up was that in nearly all of the south Asian soaps, the women were always presented as quiet (verging on submissive), obedient, withstanding insults and being in the kitchen. Whilst in contrast, the female characters who weren't submissive or living in the kitchen were presented as "too Westernised", gobby, rude and disregarded their culture: basically in soap opera land they are evil.  The good daughter-in-law is silent, prays devoutly, speaks softer than cotton, has an unbelievable love for doing housework and obeying everyone. She is vulnerable, confined to the kitchen and often told to "do as she is told!" And as she does what she is told, remains obedient etc: she is presented as a good, ideal daughter-in-law whom everyone loves...

The bad daughter-in-law is evil, typically wears more make-up, flamboyant saris, schemes out loud in quiet rooms (and no one hears lol), is a control freak and doesn't like the other daughter-in-law to be happy or have a positive relationship with the mother-in-law. In a sense, she's above the men of the family but is presented as being evil. 

It is also interesting to note that the good daughter-in-law is light skinned, has large earnest brown eyes, small lips, covered hair and minimal make up whilst the evil character is generally portrayed as dark skinned, exaggerated make-up and has evil music when she appears on screen.

The music on these shows is ANOTHER story as are the shoddy, amateur camera effects: do we really need an individual close up of everyone's fake shock faces, have them go black and white and technicolor with lightening bolt noises? We get it: someone effed up big time and it is bad....really bad!

So you can see it gets messy and tangled up. Both of these women don't have a job, they stay confined to the family home and rely on their husbands. It suggests that these women cannot live without their husbands and are at their mercy. Of course this realistically doesn't relate to the majority of south Asian women many of whom are well-educated, have their own job, financial independence or own property. A lot of them don't know how to cook either. 

It's incredibly inflated (for entertainment purposes of course, but some people take it seriously) and the gender roles are clearly marked out: man must work and woman must cook. 

Don't get me wrong: some shows are light-hearted, cheerful and purely about comedy with several female characters being the heroines and getting ahead in life

However, it's important to remember the distinction between soap opera land and reality. I'm aware that the majority of people have their heads screwed on the right way, are liberal, tolerant people but there's the percentage of goofs who believe this inflated stuff. 

A lot of people don't live in such an extended family anymore let alone a nuclear family; divorced families are rarely presented on such channels and the conflict is always shown between women - male conflict is rarely discussed and if it is: it's usually about land, male ego and something to do with a woman. 

These women are presented as jealous, untrusting and power hungry creatures: OK, as human beings, I guess we all have the element within our nature. But to have it repeatedly shown in every single show, on every single channel is tedious. It's not original and I think it subconsciously erodes our faith in what we think. 

The way that relationships, family unit, mannerisms and attitudes are formed often is a reflection of our society and society often reflects us as individuals. The media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, Internet whatever) tries to mimic that and spoon feed us an unrealistic, idealised version of these things.

It is important not to get caught up in such things and to look beyond everything that is spoon fed to us; we need to use our minds more and listen to our compassionate humane side. We all like to think that any form of TV is purely for entertainment purposes, which the majority of it is, but many of us don't seem to be aware that perhaps we could be picking up things (good and bad) without us realising it. 

NEXT TIME: Beauty: what is expected of us and what lengths do some women go to in order to attain such looks.

This post is part of a series where I will be looking at the perception, attitude and personal view of south Asian women in general. If you would like to offer your thoughts, opinions or suggestions for topics to discuss please post a comment and I will do my best to reply.