As I continue my saree challenge today with 10 days already
gone I have come to have many different thoughts on the saree. I would like to first point out that the
saree is such a beautiful dress. It can
be worn many different ways, comes in such vibrant and beautiful colors, and
the blouses and way in which the saree is tied does accentuate the female body
in such a nice manner drawing attention to the natural pear shape of the female
figure. Some information that I have
acquired through other women and sometimes men during my days of saree wearing:
1.
Sarees
are traditionally worn daily after marriage.
Married women can wear a chudi on weekends or when doing something active
like yoga. At home a nighty can be worn
as well. A nighty is a long simple dress
typically made of cotton.
2.
The material of your saree is an indicator of
your status. Although this is never
directly said it is implied and easily observed.
3.
As a white woman wearing a saree, Indian men
will actually respect you and not think degrading thoughts about you. I came to this piece of information by an
Indian man at the local hotel bar.
4.
It is rather hard to move quickly in a
saree. I came to this piece of
information by walking with many Indian women in sarees and through my personal
experience. To add a bit to this, it is
so hard for me to tell if it is just a cultural thing because both men and
women in India move very slowly.
Traditional men wear is also hard to move quickly in so I am not sure if
they are related or perhaps just a coincidence.
5.
The showing of stomach and upper back is
okay. Coming from a culture where we
rarely show our midriff on a daily bases I am rather self conscious of my
stomach showing. I struggle to wrap my
saree so that it does not show any of my stomach. I asked Chandra and Durqa about the stomach
and both answered with saying that it is personal preference. However, I have noticed that older women do
show a great deal of their stomach while if they wrap me up they do not reveal
an inch of mine. So I am not sure if
there is some unwritten rule that if you are younger you must show less or
maybe it has to do with me being unmarried and that dictates how much I can
show.
6.
I could have a whole different section for
blouses but here is the abbreviated version.
Jonathan pointed it out to me that elderly women do not wear any blouses
and I have found through my own observations that this is more common in the
village areas than in the city area where I live. Blouses can be sewn by nearly any women in
Southern India. I have only had two
different women sew me a blouse but the general rule to blouses is that they
need to be tight. They need to be tight
around the rib cage, neck line, and the arms.
I am not sure where this idea came from but I know that it makes the
blouse, which is actually a very attractive piece of clothing, immensely
uncomfortable. I have convinced both
women that I require loose clothing and therefore have a blouse which is much
more comfortable than the average Southern Indian women wears. There are also many ways to express your
individuality through your blouse. There
are a number of different ways to get the back neckline shaped. Lastly, the shape of the breast area can also
be chosen. You can have anything from a
Madonna cone shape to a soft round look.
Now back to my original point: After several days of vacationing and wearing
other clothes I have come to realize how restrictive the saree is as I put it
on. It interests me because I love
cultural and I am all for maintaining cultural traditions and perhaps I would
feel differently if all women made the conscious decision to wear sarees and
were not forced by the institution of marriage.
I couldn’t help but think that the sarees were a tool of keeping “women
in their place”, a term I have heard used by an Indian man several times. This is not to say that many women don’t love
wearing the saree-of course many women love wearing the saree because it is a
huge part of their cultural identity, especially as a Tamilian. I often think that many women are not given
the luxury to contemplate their situation and therefore have never thought
about their daily ritual of putting on a saree and if asked about their wearing
a saree they would tell you that they began wearing a saree daily when they
were married. Now, all that being said, I
have seen many educated women who wear sarees with pride, which makes me happy
and is why I continue to wear my sarees.
These educated women have taken back what is theirs and do not wear them
because their husbands tell them to – they wear them because they choose to,
because it is their cultural tradition and because it is a beautiful
dress. So I stand with these women in
honoring their culture and I put on my saree.
This however does not keep my brain from swimming with thoughts
questioning feminism and the role that sarees play in it.
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