Be big, like Dolly Parton

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A video of a khap panchayat member in Haryana saying that women’s phones should be smashed, went viral earlier this month. A sports teacher in a school, he disapproved of girls who rode astride bikes, behind their fathers, talking on mobile phones, their clothes hitched beyond a level on their legs he thought appropriate. Later, 24 khap panchayats made a resolution (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/haryana/gen-z-vs-haryana-khap-panchayats-old-rules-new-rebels/article71395638.ece) against marriage by choice to someone within the clan or village, and against live-in and same-sex relationships.

Most women of my generation – Gen X – would never have said NO to any figure in authority. We shrank, made ourselves small, sometimes wanting to disappear when reprimanded. Gen Z’s voices resonate in our heads, through earphones, as we listen to them on social media, telling us exactly what they think of us. They took on the khaps, powerful men in their communities, pretty much calling them clueless old men trying to control women.

This ability to fill up physical and mental space, as women in their 20s are doing, is wonderful. The women students in Manjari’s Scheduled Tribe hostel, traversed many kilometres to be at the men’s hostel, so they could collectively strike for better hostel conditions (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/maharashtra/maharashtra-gen-z-adivasis-ask-for-more/article71396444.ece). Manjari is on the outskirts of Pune, and the students have many hours of commute each day to college, with already-vulnerable women naturally at greater risk in public transport and on the roads.

When women do take up space though, they are in danger of being mentally harmed, not just from some men, but also from women infected by patriarchal thought and practice. Everyone from film-star-MP Kangana Ranaut to actor Priyanka Chopra’s mother had a problem with the bralette that actor Kriti Sanon wore in a now-withdrawn ad.

Bralettes, let’s remember, are a garment of ease, sans underwires and other buttressing that some women’s clothing has — even saree blouses. Women seldom have it easy.

Like in the 1980 movie 9 to 5 , where the boss made the three women he worked closely with squirm, mirroring the changing workplace where women struggled with the male gaze. They ultimately got their revenge, but the movie itself was written from their point of view. Unlike Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown Ups , which, 46 years later, has five women revolve around a man who likes guns and gore.

But we didn’t expect anything less from Dolly Parton, who starred in 9 to 5 and wrote the title song for the movie. Dolly, at 5 feet, owned where she came from (poverty), the way she looked (cheap, as she said), and how she styled herself (big hair and lots of sequins).