Beyond the body obsession: An essay by Pratyoush Onta
Ashutosh Tiwari
Beyond the Body Obsession
by Pratyoush Onta
Last weekend issue no. 4 of the new monthly magazine, Sarbottam,
arrived in the shops. As a Nepali language print-media junkie, I quickly
bought a copy
and took it home to read. Both the cover story on the theme of fashion and
the essay written by Ms Minakshi Bandana Sharma, first runners-up in Ms
World Nepal '97, depressed me.
Near the beginning of the cover story, I
came across the following line (in my translation): "A person who loves to
describe himself as ... modern and even civilized, does his best to keep
himself informed of new designs and clothes by new designers and buys the
latest models of clothing within his budget." I read the rest of the
article hoping that the writer would include some critical perspective on
the growth of fashion obsession in our society. Informative regarding the
current scene, the article did not contain such a perspective.
I then read Sharma's essay entitled (again in translation) "Lack of
Success in Love and Refound Love." 'Refound Love' - written in Devnagari
- caught my attention. As she proceeded to explain what it meant , I
thought something was wrong. She was talking about how harmful it is to
start a new relationship when one is still hurting from the end of a
previous relationship. Such relationships that are entered into to ignite
jealousy in one's ex-lover or to deal with one's own sorrow, she defined
as 'refound love.' I told myself that unless Sharma's cohort of beauty
contestants have coined a new term 'refound love' to describe such a
relationship (if so, it has completely bypassed me), its correct
rendering should be 'rebound love.'
Readers might think that this is such a small error that it is not
worth commenting upon. On the contrary, I think that these errors are the
evidence, based on which we can make a compelling argument that our search
for a 'modern' identity has not empowered our minds to meet the challenges
of our times (here learning precise but elementary English), but has
instead converted our bodies into sites of increasingly devouring
obsessions with fashion, love and sex.
Putting the magazine away, my thoughts went back to a review I had
written some three years ago in this paper. I had then reviewed the first
issue of the now-defunct magazine, Attitudes, within days of its arrival
in the shops. Promotional advertisement about the magazine had described
its scope in the following manner:"The Decade - The 90's. The Nepalese
media - dominated by political, economic and other depressing issues. The
question - are things really that bad? We at ATTITUDES think differently.
Life is beautiful, it is to be celebrated. The trees, the birds, the
hills and valleys .... People in love, your favourite T.V. programmes, ...
Celebrities at home and abroad, 'tu cheez badi hai mast mast'...." The
maiden issue of Attitudes had described itself as a "happy magazine" that
was about "love, life and you."
In my review, I agreed with the editorial view that life needs to be
celebrated. However, I was less than sympathetic to the ways in which that
magazine went about this celebration. Among other things, I then wrote "In
trying to avoid critical appreciation of life, this magazine partakes of a
strand of postmodern aesthetics which defers meaningful political
engagement endlessly.
The danger is that such uncritical celebration can
soon become vapid in the extreme. Critical appreciation of our landscape,
of celebrities at home and abroad, of people in love, and what have you, is
an acceptable form of cultural analysis but descriptive narratives that
simply cultivate a culture of spectatorship cannot produce a competent,
happy Nepal."
I argued vehemently that to be socially relevant, any
celebration of Nepali lives has to come to terms with our realities in all
its poverty, and print-media forums like Attitudes that want to intervene
in the collective imagination of Nepalis of a certain social class cannot
just pretend that these depressing realities do not exist in our midst. Yet
in removing the subject from the arena of critical discussion, Attitudes
was asking us to participate in an act that fosters collective amnesia
about ourselves and our context.
Since that magazine carried a story on Miss Nepal '94 I had also
written, "A new sensibility of sexuality increasingly dominant here
continues to make women's bodies the site of both conspicuous display and
lustful male gazes.
Even as the pageant organizers claimed that female bodies were not
what were been judged, the responses given by contestants in Miss Nepal '94
are testimony to the fact that when it comes to investing on display of
the body and the empowerment of the mind, it is the former that has
received more attention."
I recall here what one contestant had said in
that beauty contest about the kind of man she would want to have ("He must
be civilization and ..."). Such an elementary error on her part then had
represented to me the results of the process in which Nepalis of a certain
class had invested more on the pomp of the modern and not on their
competence to handle modernity in all its complexity. I had then said a
celebration of Miss Nepal '94 without noting this contradiction is
misplaced, and I say the same thing regarding Sharma's error noted above.
The trend against which I wrote three years ago shows signs of
increasing strength. Minakshi Bandana Sharma, a beauty contestant, feels
no inhibition about expounding on the dangers of 'refound love' even as
the rest of the English speaking world will have to be told that it is
a particular Nepali avatar of 'rebound love'. Larger sections of the
Nepali public are increasingly more interested in displaying women's
bodies in the name of beauty pageants.
The editors of the magazine which chose to print Sharma's
essay with the error or the particular cover story on the growth of fashion
in Nepal, unfortunately, continue to fuel the Nepali youth's obsession with
the body and its desires. The attitude forwarded by Attitudes and other
magazines, both in English and Nepali, regarding an uncritical rendering of
our encounter with modernity has become more rampant and critical voices
are being rendered as lonely cries in the wilderness.
If we want a Nepal led by a generation that thinks only with its
genitalia, then no further discussion is necessary. On the other hand, if
we want a Nepal that can tackle modernity and its discontents in all its
forms, we better energize a social movement that asks for moderation in
items like fashion and body-care.
Popular print-media forums and journalists who write for them
could help by giving space to critical
exercises that will gradually empower our minds to come to terms with the
stark Nepali realities that exist beyond the body obsession and do
something about them. And the likes of Sharma and other beauty contestants
could be advised to give at least as much attention to learning some
elementary concepts as keeping themselves informed of "new designs and
clothes by new designers" to look "modern and even civilized." Anything
less will be, I say, grossly uncivilized in the Nepali context. THE END.
Bhushan Khanal
I think it comes down to a very simple rule, even tasteless subject can be
written in style.
> I argued vehemently that to be socially relevant, any
> celebration of Nepali lives has to come to terms with our realities in all
> its poverty, and print-media forums like Attitudes that want to intervene
> in the collective imagination of Nepalis of a certain social class cannot
> just pretend that these depressing realities do not exist in our midst. Yet
> in removing the subject from the arena of critical discussion, Attitudes
> was asking us to participate in an act that fosters collective amnesia
> about ourselves and our context.
>
That type of sentiment, if present in the US would probably put 50% of the
magazines out of business.
> The editors of the magazine which chose to print Sharma's
> essay with the error or the particular cover story on the growth of fashion
> in Nepal, unfortunately, continue to fuel the Nepali youth's obsession with
> the body and its desires.
Pratyoush, I don't mean any disrespect here but I think you are just getting
old. If I want to read "critical rendering of our encounter with modernity" I
probably won't pick up the next issue of Attitudes but if I wanted to indulge on
the latest "fashion talk" without having to dig past the weekly list of the
newly appointed ministers, I probably would not pick up the next issue of Rising
Nepal or the Kathmandu Post. There is always a place in every society for
garbage, and there are always some garbage that smell worse than other.
Bhushan
Seattle.
