Sorority or Solidarity: Young Women to Be Proud Of

This week, I’m thinking not of Anna Nicole Smith or Britney Spears, not even of Helen Mirren, but of a different set of heroes – Kate Holloway, Joanna Kieschnick and four other young women who quit their sorority in DePauw University to protest the eviction of 23 other members.

The Delta Zeta sorority in DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, evicted members who were overweight, black, Korean and Vietnamese. The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression, reports the New York Times.

Holloway and Kieschnick were among the 12 members who were asked to stay, reportedly because they fit the slender and pretty archetype that the sorority wished for its image.

But they didn’t. That’s rare these days, isn’t it? But, that’s exactly what the word “sorority” implies.

You go, girls!

This piece of news comes close on the heels of the report that sexualized images of women in the media do serious damage to young girls’ self-esteem.

Why has it become so un-cool to talk about these things? In teaching my class on media literacy, students find it challenging to connect these images and the things they read about young girls’ behavior with their own. The discussions are uneasy, stalled, and always about “those other silly girls who lack self-esteem.”

Yet, every quarter I teach the class, at least a fourth of my female students choose the topic of media impact on girls’ self-esteem/body image for their research papers for class. In these papers, they sometimes address their own experiences in battling the issue.

Through this cloud of depression and silence and falling in a skinny line, six “pretty” girls put their foot down.

Why is it so hard to talk about when a whole generation of girls is growing up feeling like they don’t want to live in their own bodies?

Probably because we women who have gone before them haven’t served as the best role models. Do we have it all figured out? Are we easy in our own bodies? Or have we given up the feminist (gasp, that word!) fight because we’re too busy fighting off fine lines and wrinkles?

Thank you, Kate Holloway. Thank you, Joanna Kieschnick. And the four other girls whose names I would love to know so I can say them out loud.

More on India and Pakistan

Listen to an interview with blog author Sonora Jha on PakCast, a weekly audio podcast program. Dr. Jha discusses relations between US-based Indians and Pakistanis, independent media, the contemporary immigrant experience, and the merits of Bollywood movies with Nasir Aziz, Ethan Casey and Asad Faizi.

Threads, Links and the Word "Samjhauta"

What a cloudy morning this is, President's Day 2007. So many bits of news are crowding our consciousness, and threads dart out from each one to connect to the other.

Bombs have gone off on a "Peace Train" between India and Pakistan and at least 65 people have been killed.

I look at the pictures.

This thread darts out. The boy in the picture above resembles, just a little, my son, who lives here with me in America and has the day off from school for Presidents Day.

I look, among several other publications, at The New York Times report where these words from reporter Somini Sengupta bring tears to my eyes: "By the time the bodies were pulled out of the train, the Attari Express, they were so thoroughly burned that it was difficult to tell who they were, let alone say whether they were Indian or Pakistani."

This thread darts out --Will my students one day do such succinct yet poignant, controlled reporting? No opinion in those words of Sengupta's, just the facts, but the fact itself is that brutal death, once again, obliterates the assumed aggression of nationalist identity the way no Peace Train ever could.

This thread darts out -- The word "peace" is so loaded, so tired, so exhausted with baggage. And then I think of the term "Peace Train." That's the translation for "Samjhauta Express," the train on which men, women and children were charred to death. It's a bi-weekly train that runs every Tuesday and Friday, carrying people to and from the India-Pakistan border. "Peace Train" is also the name of a very hopeful song by Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) that's used recently in a little video presentation using images from Tehran, Iran, to urge Americans to beware that a War Train from Washington is hurtling toward that country now.

This thread darts out -- Is America really going to go to war with Iran? A close friend gleefully supported the idea last night. I tried to take my mind off that troubling conversation by logging on to the news online. The first thing I saw was the news about the train blasts in India, minutes after it had happened.

Many threads darted out. None of them will tie up together neatly.

Still “Not Ready to Make Nice” With the Dixie Chicks?

The Grammy Awards usually don’t make me sit up and whistle. But this whole Dixie Chicks controversy makes me wonder how music became so murky – people are questioning whether or not the band’s sweep at the Grammy Awards last night was “politically motivated.”
Couldn’t the same be said for the boycotting of the band’s music by country radio stations ever since Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines expressed embarrassment about President George W. Bush? Wasn’t that boycott politically motivated? Also, why do we look for the ugly side of conflict instead of simply taking joy in the prettiness of its outcomes?
Last night, the group won each of the five categories in which it was nominated. One of the songs in the album is titled “Not Ready To Make Nice,” a resilient follow-up by Maines to the criticisms following her 2003 comments.
Now, I haven’t listened to the Dixie Chicks, although I did consider going to see “Shut Up and Sing,” the documentary about their (almost inadvertent) rise to political statement. I am not writing this in support of the Dixie Chicks, but in support of “chicks” (if you will pardon the term) who don’t shut up. And in support of speaking out, or singing out, or shouting out, or sloganeering out.
Art has always been a happy place for activism. I wonder what Bob Dylan, that veteran of songs that socked it to the establishment, would have to say about the possible backlash against the award-winning singers. After all, how many roads must a woman walk down? Interestingly, Dylan himself was nominated for the best album award that the Dixie Chicks walked off with. I wonder, in fact, what Joan Baez would say.
Actually, I can’t help but think of the words in a song by another country music artiste, Lee Ann Womack –

When you come close to selling out
Reconsider
Give the heavens above
More than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance

Did Ms. Womack come out in support of the Dixie Chicks? Her song would imply that she'd champion their cause.
Well, whether the three young women are now dancing all the way to the bank or standing up a little taller, I know that we can all do a little jig for what the Grammy Awards did for reclaiming the freedom of expression.
Here’s what some others are feeling – reports say that the Grammy victory will cause a backlash against the Dixie Chicks. MSNBC quotes Jim Jacobs, owner of WTDR-FM, a country radio station in Talladega, Ala., as saying, “Most country stations aren’t playing the Chicks, and they aren’t going to start now.”
If you can’t already tell, I like country music. It reminds me of India. Go figure. But, right about now, I wouldn’t mind boycotting country music stations. Because, the way I see it, they just don’t get music.

Floods: Do We Seek High Drama With the High Waters?

What do we do about news and pictures of floods?

Before you roll your eyes and navigate away from this page (navigate -- a word so different in its meaning here as compared to its meaning for people navigating flood waters on boats on the streets of Jakarta), I want you to know that I really want answers to that question above.

What do we, people who control the media and have the power to email/google/youtube/write/take pictures/blog/edit/talk/be heard...all those of us who have Voice...what do we do?

Here's what a friend of mine did when I gasped and informed her about the flooding in Jakarta : she shrugged and made a sympathetic sound. And what did I expect her to do?

Communicating about third world disasters is a particular challenge in today's international reporting. Compassion fatigue has set in, and the old forms of news coverage seem almost dispassionate themselves. We live in a post-tsunami world. Raised in a visual, entertainment-driven world, we're probably waiting for high drama with the high waters. We know the movie's just around the corner.Will we settle for anything less?

So, what should this reporting look like? When I teach "International Affairs Reporting," I push students to think beyond disaster journalism as we have known it. I now pose to you some of the questions I pose to them --

1. Do we "make it relevant" to the American reader? For instance, do we quickly do stories comparing the floods in Jakarta with the floods after Hurricane Katrina? This may bring the story closer to home, but, do we have to care only if it feels like something that could happen/has happened to us?

2. Shall we take the "guilt" out of the pictures? Or should we leave it there?

3. And this, the most important of questions -- what kind of stories have we done about Jakarta recently? Is it really just floods (and, maybe, fear of Indonesia as having the highest number of Muslims in the world) that bring Jakarta to our front pages? I recall the first time Jakarta impacted my consciousness (we spelled it Djakarta then) was in 1994, when the Second Asian and Pacific Ministerial Conference on Women in Development (Jakarta)was held. I was a journalist and I wanted to go to the conference but couldn't. The Jakarta Declaration for the Advancement of Women in Asia and the Pacific was adopted there.

Those were happy times. These aren't. But, I am still left with those questions. My students struggle with them, too. Any answers?