BANGALORE: It is no mean task for a woman to get her work taken seriously in today’s world. More often than not, her looks, sexuality and patriarchal ‘responsibilities’ get dragged into consideration for no apparent reason.
Recently, the photograph of Kerala-based IPS trainee Merin Joseph went viral on the Internet, thanks to her good looks. Men on social networking websites expressed their wish to commit crimes just so that the pretty officer would come to arrest them.
Merin (23) cleared the Civil Services exam in her first attempt after graduating from St Stephen’s College.
One of the youngest IPS trainees of her batch, she was also selected to lead the Indian delegation at the Y20 Summit 2014 held in Australia in July.
Inspired perhaps by pornographic films, male commentators on the Internet conveniently overlooked her accomplishments. Facebook memes referring to her looks were widely shared and liked, while Merin’s account was flooded with friend requests.
In a stark contrast to what happened with the attractive police officer, a blogger from Minnesota was criticised for her looks. Galit Breen, a happily married mother of three, wrote on The Huffington Post a piece titled 12 Secrets Happily Married Women Know.
Working as a team, simple kindness and everyday politeness were highlighted in the article that also featured Breen’s wedding pictures.
The reactions on the comments section of the article were nasty, as instead of focusing on the writing, people were commenting on how fat Breen looked in the pictures.
A man named Matthew Belmont called her a ‘heifer’, while Robert Totterweich said, “WE GET IT! huffnpuff...you love fat women...we get it...enough is enough.”
“I peered at comments like these through splayed fingers, counted how many “likes” these got as opposed to how many readers told these people to stop being like “that” — whatever “that” might be. Cruel, unnecessary, fat-focused. Behind the safety of my screen, I was keeping score — for my article or against my body. Because these are the two camps that the commenters joined,” Breen wrote in the article titled IT HAPPENED TO ME: I Wrote An Article About Marriage, And All Anyone Noticed Is That I’m Fat.
In all the chaos, the point that the author was trying to make was lost.
It was as if what she said was unimportant as the picture on the page didn’t meet the society’s standards of beauty.
The writer confessed to crying a lot over the next few days and trying hard to hold herself back from publishing her current pictures in which she was thinner.
“Our society’s incessant focus on women’s bodies and the way we deem it necessary and appropriate to comment on them is, at best, misguided, and at worst, damaging,” she added.
Going by Breen’s words, if we refrain from body-bashing women, young and old, we might help them accept and love themselves and inspire them to do better in their lives. And that can’t hurt.