Last week I finished a Netflix series called ‘Dead to Me’. An unmistakable facet of the fourth wave of feminism has ushered in literature about the ability of women to ‘be whole’ without the (illusion or otherwise) of stability that men offer us. And I started wondering, why aren’t there television shows/ movies/ literature that primarily focus on a bunch of men after a breakup? What is it about women that makes us fundamentally vulnerable to the whole “break-up phase”, where white women will almost inevitably go through a power trip where they “reinvent” themselves?
The answer was very simple to me, really. As women, we have an inbuilt system of providing and care-giving built within us. Well, not all women. But most of us. In my four years in one of the premier hotbeds of liberal feminism, I have been shocked repeatedly to discover that women tend to shape a significant portion of their lives around the men they’re with. But it would be wrong to say that we’re selfless in these ventures. As a woman who has always wanted to carve out her own identity, I too am guilty of having made it my mission to be with a man who would in some form help me to realize the aspirations I wanted to achieve. Of course, things really took a turn when I actually started to love the person I am with. The point is, we make this stability that is given us by a male pillar in our life a significant part of our identity.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a girlfriend wherein we spoke about how we actually actively think about our relationships, as something to be crafted meticulously instead of something to go home to. Somewhere, these heterosexual relationships become a part of our job, assuming as much importance in our lives as our careers would. And honestly, that’s an additional stressor we could do without. What more often than not happens is that from the very start we tend to overthink about our romantic lives, leading to feminist Netflix series which glorify the violent behaviour of women as a reaction to the injustices done to us by men who fail to live up to our standards. And looking at these characterisations, we see ourselves because most of us lose our minds by putting an unbearable amount of pressure on ourselves to “keep men”.
I recently watched Greta Gerwig’s ‘Little Women’ and the point of the ending really changed my life. A little bit. Jo March was a woman way ahead of her time, because our mothers still believe that it’s important to settle down to find peace in life. Jo did not want to be tied down by the limitations of marriage, she wanted to “sink her own canoe”. But of course, Louisa May Alcott’s novel would never have made waves the way it did unless the protagonist found the ultimate happy ending that is prescribed to all women, never mind she is a genius and one of the handful of women of her time who managed to be a critically acclaimed novelist whose message lives on for centuries. Unfortunately, this interweaving of our lives with a need for stability has not escaped us, even today now that we have university education, accolades, freedom to be sexually active and money of our own to spend.
In western liberal culture, the breaking away from relationships is relatively more acceptable, probably because these women didn’t grow up watching “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”, where “Pyaar Ek Hi Baar Hota Hai, Shaadi Bhi Ek Hi Baar Hota Hai” is something I would actually say to myself before going to bed every night after I broke up for the first time in fucking high school. And to exacerbate the problem, many of our families and many many men of our regressive society subscribe to this same notion.
‘Four More Shots’ in Amazon Prime may be an unrealistic portrayal of the liberties Indian women are allowed in this society, but if it gives the average non-intellectual female watcher an impetus to own their spinstership the way Jo March of the mid-19th century did, then we should welcome that ‘Sex and the City’ ripoff with open arms. Let’s take another pop culture reference close to home – the iconic leaving the husband scene in ‘Made in Heaven’ Season 1, where Tara broke the male-dependent life she built for herself in a wealthy South Delhi household and headed out to “sink her own canoe”. Of course, in a society where women still build their identity around the men they choose to give them stability, and eventually let go of their own personalities in the process, using unfair means to break up a marriage and lure a man into a relationship can be perceived as an act of ambition.
I think it’s time that we women stopped having break up parties and looked at ourselves in the mirror day after a breakup and told ourselves that nothing has changed. Relationships come and go. It shouldn’t be something you mark on your calendar.
Feminist Bread and Black Coffee 