OT: So stunned by documentary "The World Before Her" A Must See if you like that...

So I am at home today, recovering from the stomach flu...blech!  But the house is quiet, the kids are at school, and serenity abounds.  Even if I have to deal with an icky stomach, the quiet makes up for it!!  My gem of a husband drove the 45 minutes to my kid's school to drop them off for me this morning. As soon as I feel better, he's going to get some serious lov'in!  Anyhow.  I know it is OT, but I watched the most amazing documentary on Rogers On Demand, called "The World Before Her", and it touched me so much that I needed to share somewhere, so you on OH, get my ramblings. I am home, and a little bored, so this is a long post, but when something affects me, I write about it. If you're bored and have the time, read on.

 The documentary is about the experiences of two different groups of women in the immensely changing culture of India.  One angle follows 20 competitors in the highly controversial Miss India Pageant, while the other follows young girls at a training camp run by the Durga Vahini, the women's wing of one of the largest Hindu Nationalist extremist groups.  It was done by a female, Indo-Canadian film maker, and it is very well executed IMO.  It makes you think quite a bit about our own culture, the effect of the beauty industry, and the oppression of women in other cultures that we can't even begin to imagine. 

The biggest stand-out profile for me was of a young woman named Prachi, who has been going to the extremist camps since she was 2 (I believe she was in her late teens/early 20's at the time of the taping).  She is firey and spirited.  She lives and breathes the Hindu nationalist movement, but you can see her feelings of entrapment in everything she says and does.  She is clearly not a young woman who wants to marry and have children, yet she is fighting tooth and nail for a movement which seeks to control her right to opportunity and choice.  She says she will marry and have children because it is her role as a woman. She acknowledges (and her father proudly professes on camera), that her father beats her, and has even gone so far as to heat an iron rod and burn her foot to teach her a lesson about lying (...because she lied about her homework being done).  On film, she confesses that she can accept the beatings, because she is indebted to her father simply because he let her ( a girl child), live upon her birth.  Over 750,000 baby girls are aborted every year in India, simply because they are girls, and the statistics as to how many are abandoned or murdered at birth, are unknown.   

I have always had a tie with India.  I spent a month there working in small village,in an orphanage and I'll never forget the experience.  I spent a lot of time with the women there, and experienced life in their shoes, if only in the smallest way.  What really stood out for me was the vibrancy of the women when outside of the influence of the men. I still have images of them smiling, and the way they cover their huge smiles in public so as to remain humble and meek.  There has been such a change in the country since I was there 16 years ago; young people seeking a new westernized future of choice and opportunity for men and women.  There is also such a huge cultural, and traditional retaliation against  modernization and what is seen as the upheaval of the Hindu religion and related culture.  I remember crying when we left India, and it was partly for the feeling that I would miss the rich culture and generosity of the people I met- people who treated me like a princess when they had nothing, and partly because I hurt for the women I had met, and the oppression they were facing everyday.

Anyhow, I just ache when I see this stuff, and it causes me to feel so fortunate for the experience I have have as a Canadian woman, or the experience my girls will have as they grow up.  Good documentary, not graphic to the point of making it hard to watch, just very honest and eye-opening. 

Now I am replying to my own post.  Ha!  I just can't stop replaying it in my head.  I'm just thinking about how the "modern Indian women" in the film are seeking freedom by trying to be named the most beautiful woman in India.  It's sad that they feel their only way to freedom is to use a beauty pageant (a patriarchal invention), to try and combat their patriarchal society and try to attain freedom. It's only a perceived freedom, and it's only granted to one woman (the winner), who is allowed to use her designation as a platform, on the condition that first men judge the beauty of her every body part and deem her worthy.  The other 19 women have to go back home to life (likely in a rural village), where there will be traditionalists who will hunt and torment her for her participation in the event. 

Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j21b1r13hbE

Sounds like an outstanding documentary. As an older female I know that my 25 year old daughter does not understand where we have come from in Canada. When we discus this she finds it hard to believe the freedom of choice she has was not always available.

In countries like India the change will take many more generations to fulfill. We have seen in the news how families moving here can not adjust to the freedom their daughters want. It has cost women their lives.

Today what happens around the world is readily available for all to see. Shining a light on these injustices hopefully will help these countries to change

I agree.  It will take many generations. India is so diverse.  Even though many people see it as one nation on the surface, there is such immense variety in cultural practices.  That makes change hard.  It is like Africa.  I am reading this really good book about why Africa has such divide, and why change is so hard.  It has to do (again) with, the immense amount of cultural diversity within the country that the average person doesn't understand.  I had a really good conversation the other night over coffee, with a new friend.  She immigrated here before having children,from Burundi, Africa.  Our daughters are in the same class, and I teach her son.  She talked at length with me about how hard it was for her to learn to become a "Canadian parent", as opposed to an "African mother" (all her words, not mine), and the struggle she has reconciling her own culture with Canadian culture.  She is constantly reading parenting books, etc... to try and assimilate, but not sure that she wants to at the same time.  She lives with a lot of conflicted feelings.  It is easy to dismiss other people's upbringing and forget about their cultural experience in our country.  So many people are of the opinion that "Well, you are in Canada, so forget everything else and just act Canadian"  She is a good reminder for me to be sensitive to where people have come from.  It colours their daily experience in so many ways.

I hope that she does not lose all her culture. It is the diversity of people in Canada that makes us a great country. I enjoy learning about other peoples cultures. I just wish they would leave their conflicts at home.

I took a soc. class years ago and it relates to this very distinctly. If you google "missing females" you'll see that world wide, not just India, there are millions of us "missing". There are jails in India where women live because they wish to escape their husbands and the husband's famlies and it's the only safe place to live. Without being burned alive or beaten to death.

In China, they have ultrasounds to determine the gender of the fetus, and if it's a girl, the fetus is aborted.

Women world wide are still devalued and sadly, animals have higher value in some places.

I think every person needs to travel off this continent and on to another to really comprehend and value what we have here in Canada. And then maybe develop some compassion for other cultures and ethnicities. To understand that people need education, not anger and racism. Compassion, not belittling.

Here, we have the right to vote, the right to live without violence, the right to abortion, the right to equality in the job place, the right to protest and while it may not be a perfect system, our government at least stands behind it by making these "rights" law.

In Chile,  during the time of Pinochet, the women were not allowed to protest so they "danced" with their missing loved one's pictures in their hands. Pinochet slaughtered thousands of men and women with no accountabililty. to anyone.  But the women could not fight back ......"Sting" writes about this in his song "They dance alone".  Imagine your husband and son being taken from your home and you have no idea where they are.....or even if they live.

Until you travel abroad and see this for yourself, you can't understand those freedoms or at least it's harder to be sympathetic and compassionate.  It's also harder to understand people of other ethnicities and why they live the way they do. Why they believe what they do.

Muslim for instance, After 911 the amount of racism that raised it's head just astounded me. Had not one person ever heard of an extremist? Or had they conveniently forgotten the Crusades?   The witch burnings? Did history teach us nothing?                      

It also distresses me when I see younger women who unintentionally dismiss the rights that they have as a "given". I almost think it should be a class in high school about HOW they got those rights and it wasn't so long ago. And that they need to carry on that forward movement and not dismiss it like it's some easily forgotten toy. Perhaps this is our fault for not sharing with them the importance of this. 

 We have not yet gotten the message through to these younger people, women especially, that magazines like Chatelaine only endorse qualities and perspectives that view us as objects and that the only body that is "socially acceptable" is a thin body. When I see titles on this magazine that say "How to please your man" I always think to myself "Screw that..how bout ways to please ME!".  While the times are changing slowly and more plump women are being used as models, society still demands that "skinny" is "the look". And look what it does to us women. All kinds of self esteem issues come up as a result of this including but not limited to anorexia, bulemia.  This **** is brainwashed into the heads of young people (and even my old age) from a very early time.

Yes I am a feminist and proud. But the definition of that is equality. It does NOT mean better than.

Sorry for the hijack but you brought up something very special to me.

Thank you for your tolerance