Thoughts — Womxn

This COVID wave burst my privilege bubble. From being the “work from home kid”, who woke up 1 minute before meetings and was served lunch on my work table, I had to adapt to waking up 2 hours before work to cook some breakfast, feed our pet, heat milk and keep the trash outside … and how I wish that was the end of the loooooong to-do list. The day my mother tested positive, I knew I’d have to work and take care of her and my  family, and with no one else to help, this had to be a...

The plot line of Lipstick Under My Burkha (directed by Alankrita Shrivastava) revolves around 4 women, each from a different age group and each leading very different lives. A mother of 3 children, left alone to fend for herself; a widowed woman who attends Satsangs; a 20 something year old ambitious woman finding her place in society; and a college girl trying to find her own identity in an oppressed environment. Each one of these characters are first introduced as very “desi” women, from different backgrounds living in a small town, full of dreams. However, through the course of the movie, we...

Have you ever looked at a weight loss advert which says “love yourself #bodypositivity” and thought to yourself “of course it’s easy to love yourself when you fit into an ideal, how does this help me accept my weight? Should I also start exercising so I can look good and feel good?”Mainstream body positivity argues that we must rebel against unrealistic beauty standards and objectification by loving our bodies. Although widely popular and even beneficial to many, this approach fails to create a pathway from seeing certain body shapes as flaws to absolutely loving them. This might lead to a...

What inspired you to start People of Nora? Mental Health and its importance first became a part of my life when I was 13. I heard about an organization called Young Leaders for Active Citizenship. To explain, YLAC works to increase young people’s participation in the policymaking process and build their capacity to lead change. Their Counter Speech Fellowship conducted in association with Instagram is a program for teenagers to start meaningful conversations on issues important to youth around the world. I was chosen to be a part of the fellowship in 2018 and it has profoundly shaped me into...

The experience of menstruation is as varied as the menstruators. Our ideas about this  monthly cycle come from our families, culture and society. And like most experiences in our modern world, there can be little or no time for us to form our own opinions based on our individual experiences . So we tend to adopt the idea that periods are just a hurdle in what could be a perfectly smooth month. In a country like India there are diverse experiences of menstruation that carry themes of lack of privacy, stigma, lack of affordable hygienic products, misinformation, shame and exclusion...