All Eyes on Me

Before you read this next blog - please note that I'm sure my opinion doesn't hold true for all of India. Heck it may not even be true for the town I'm writing about or the time since I left. Rather, this was my personal experience and understanding at one town in India at this particular moment.

Anyone woman who says "turning heads" is a good thing has obviously never walked the streets in India. On my first morning out in Kolkata I put on a conservative outfit of loose fitting pants and a t-shirt, yet I felt like I had just stumbled into one of those dreams where you leave the house forgetting to wear pants. Almost every man I passed cranked their head around to watch me self consciously walk by. At first, I naively thought that maybe people of Kolkata don't see many westerners. Eventually, Jim and I came to the conclustion that my version of "conservative" didn't match Indian standards. Most women were dressed in a way that not only covered most of their skin, but totally hid the shape of their bodies. After adorning myself with a newly acquired scarf around my shoulders, the stares on the street were only half as bad as before.
Now, it's about 95 degrees outside, aren't women uncomfortable dressing this way? I couldn't believe that men drive women to do this - and that I was following suit. As the days in India passed, I slowly started to make sense of the hyper-conservative dress. After talking to many people about life in India we came up with a theory which may exlain why women cover up.

The teenage scene here is completely different from the US where boys and girls hang out in coed groups. Young men in India aren't allowed much contact with women before they are hitched - and most marraiges are arranged by parents. There is no reason for men to be considerate or try to win over a woman's affection. They only have to worry about courting their parents to persuade them to pick out an ideal wife. This lack of contact with the opposite sex can only lead males to gawk and act inappropriately at these mysterious and unobtainable beings walking down the street.

In smaller towns, I found wearing a scarf around my shoulders was not enough. We went to the town of Allahabad for Holi, the Hindu festival of colors. People joviantly come out in the streets on this holiday and throw colored water or powder on one another to celebrate the start of spring. Locals told us told us that men, who normally don't drink, hit the sauce hard on this day and women often get harassed and accosted. We took the safe road and played Holi with families and children (which was heaps of fun). At night, Jim and I bought sweets from the famous bakery a half block away from our hotel. We both felt quite unnerved by the intensity of stares that I recieved walking that short distance. So, I willingly wrapped a scarf around my head in an attempt to hide my face and hair. Surprisingly, this made me feel quite a bit safer.

It all clicked - I may be wrong, but I think women aren't "forced" to cover up - but it's done rather to make them feel comfortable and safe. In a way it's a self fulfilling prophecy too: women feel they have to cover up, so that even mild forms of provocative dress (capri pants for instance) stands out in a crowd. In a town where the newspaper's front page contains multiple articles on local rapes three days in a row - staying modest sounds like a smart survival tactic.

-Jenn