Mirror Mirror : Let Me Have A Look

Mirror, a source of vanity, a source of reflections and a source of disappointment. Eyes are attributed to the adage of pouring out the innermost thoughts, reflecting themselves on the surfaces of our retinas. Maybe now we can describe how it is our eyes that steadily transform into a metaphor for the mirror and one which reflects a judgement, an interpretation shaped up and moulded by thousands of others mirror and reflections. A legacy of our society.

On the late afternoon of 2008, my eyes slowly alighted with a cocktail of shock, awe and disgust. A camera phone was held close to my face, a video was playing on mute in it. A pubescent girl was slowly stripping off her grey cardigan, cotton print top and navy blue jeans. Inch by inch the flesh was being exposed and inch by inch my face was slowly becoming paler, losing its colour and composition. From the left a hand came up to my shoulders and my friend said in a voice laced with resigned sympathy, "I told you not to see this. I knew that you will not like it. MMS is not for you".

MMS, a word a heavy-laden word. A synonym for pleasure. A connotation for what is known as Porn or at least what the technology was distorted to by the carrion birds of voyeurism. Widely popular among the teens - openly in the circle of boys steadily revealing their sexuality and discreetly for the girls trying to battle with it. And it evidently made its appearance in my life in the cusp of my puberty and whispered promises of a world hitherto unknown to me.

A few months later, on another lazy day and lolling about in my bed I asked a question to myself, "If MMS is not for me then who is it for?”

And it is being still wondered by me. Why was I disgusted? Why was I shocked? Why was I even awed? 

Was it the nudity that did it for me? Was it the fact that I was seeing another woman stripping and that too, in a sexual fashion? Was I already aware that the show was not for me? Or was I struck that it was my friend who was validating the act?

John Berger drew a narrative in his 'Ways of Seeing' about the male gaze and the peeling off of women's ascendancy in her, own flesh. The nudity is for the eyes of the men. The viewer is the male. The consumer is the Man. All that the female and her body remain is a product that the patriarchal society considers to be a means to end.

Though, the query making its spin inside my mind is, whether the female populace has already accepted the male gaze and internalised the disposition to her psyche. Because that friend was a girl who introduced this parallel universe to me. And because I see the billboards being pulled up on tall buildings covered in glossy adverts of a fair-skinned girl in a two piece bikini wear and a luxurious sports car behind it. The whole picture gives ideas to me - who are they selling? Was it the car? Or was it the girl?

It is like stepping into the land of peeping toms. And yet it is not. I became the reluctant spectator, being incisive of a human’s body and more particularly that of a woman. The girl looking back at me from the cover of a women’s beauty magazine tells me she is open to us and yet she is close. As Berger informed his readers that the model has to be passive, she cannot afford to be a human being radiating off any energy. An object being controlled by the whims of her spectator, she in turns controls me as well. Her breasts accentuated, her thighs spread wide and her skin flawless and her hair shins. And it is the same story that recurs on the thousands of other lifestyle publications. They hold a mirror to us and in which we see the reflections that they want us to see. They control which reflections are to be attractive and we, the consumers in turn make it our own reflection. Or at least desires to do so.

At the age of ten, I was told to start wearing the brassiere. At the age of twelve, I came across something known as push-up bras. Two different mirrors were hold before me and two completely different reflections were formed. Does my breast need to be closed off from the world because it creates a ‘sexual imagery’? Or does it need to be shown in a strategic way to make me more ‘attractive’?

Questions were asked but the answers were never given to me.

Recently, The Atlantic magazine released an article detailing the ritual of shaving or waxing of body hair by women and its consequences. Documenting the overwhelming expenditure on the hair removal by American women, verifying the ill-effects on the skin and inculcation of a certain thought into our mind – The more hairless you are, the more attractive you become. But it can be asked then and well it should be - Attractive to whom? Berger writes that European oil paintings avoided portraying ladies with body hair on them as he reasons that hair is often linked with power and ascendancy and more specifically sexual power.

In the same way Feminism in India analysed in a thorough manner the movie posters and depiction of women in them. And the result is that of the findings of headless women – nude, stripped and exposed to the view of all. The camera has zoomed on her body parts and parts which can be seen as a product of overt sexualisation. While the male participants are clothed and looking straight into the eyes of the audience. And even if there is a women whose face is shown, her body is objectified and rendered a weak form – a final submission to the audience.

What John Berger scrutinised some four decades ago drawing his justifications from the medieval paintings is still there, but just in another form and in another dimension. A painting became a picture, a portrait became a poster. The focus is still on women and the stringent control is still applied on their bodies. New age is ushered in but the norms remain unchanged.

Carrying a single trouser in my hands I entered into the changing room and onto the full length mirror a warning was attached. It bewared the shoppers to check if there is a camera inside the room or not, recording us – the female body while the person shades a clothes to put on the other. I looked around and find none. Next day, I read a report on the internet stating that videos of women in changing rooms are released on adult sites making its circulations and the faces of the unsuspecting girls being photo-shopped on nude bodies and advertised as girls readily available for free sexual intercourse. And so it was as I eavesdropped on a group of boys from my class talking about one such unfortunate soul whose video was uploaded on the site.

A few days, back while crossing an over-bridge I saw another billboard sporting a popular celebrity with a back-brushed and gelled hair-style, a beefy body and a dark button up and grey pants. After some months one of my male friends decided to join a gym and when asked for the reason behind this he informed that it is in the trend and girls do like muscular men. One thing that I definitely did not missed is that he was carrying that same pummelled back and gelled hair that the man on the advert earlier was.