The Effect Marriage Has Had on The Women of My Family

In the earlier parts of my life, the distinguishing line between forced and arranged marriages had been blurred. In some ways, I relate this back to my westernised upbringing. An interesting study made by Edward Said in his text 'Orientalism' explored how the Western eye views other cultural practices as versions of its own tendencies. If it strays from conventional Western normalities, it is dismissed as unnatural - despite it potentially being an unproblematic custom in its place of origin. Somewhere along the line, the Western world confused the practices of forced and arranged marriages (which, I feel the need to point out, it indeed encouraged itself in prior centuries) and the effects have been widely misleading.

With my mind being imbued with the problematic images of young brides-to-be, carrying trays of tea and biscuits into the room - inhabited by a potential suitor, I was exceedingly quick to reject the possibility of an arranged marriage of my own.

I suppose I believed that no one in their right mind would ever undergo an arranged marriage willingly. The thought seemed bizarre and foreign. Unnatural and slightly unsettling. I had thought that rejecting the concept of an arranged marriage complimented the regimented feminist agenda that I had adopted and thus, it became a thing that I would shake my head at.

I'm older now, and I can recognise that my prior views were more heavily influenced by what an arranged marriage used to be as opposed to what it is now. Before, societal views that favoured wealth, fair skin and future prospects hugely dominated the minds of those who would orchestrate such marriages, and thus arranged marriages were used as a means to marry for advantage as opposed to genuine connection.

Yet, what angered me most was how arranged marriages were used to deliver a young woman away from the control of one male and into the control of another. This would often be done without wholly acknowledging the wants and needs of the young women in question, and this is arguably where the confusion between arranged and forced marriages begun.

It was in discussions with the women of my own family that led to my growing aggravation at the abundance of female ambitions that have been squandered through these binding marital contracts.

If I look at my maternal grandmother, for example, I can see a woman who had a potent love for history and acquiring knowledge of the wider world. A woman who still seeks to educate herself on the profound gravities of modern life, yet a woman who was robbed of her independence - to pursue such endeavours - at the age of seventeen.

I am seventeen, and I cannot even begin to fathom having to give up the wealth of education that I have gained in order to establish a family with another human being. There is still so much I have left to do. Still so much that I have left to learn.

In conversations with my grandmother, she tells me that she is still happy with the way she lived her life. She tells me that she cannot bring herself to regret the joys that both my mother and uncle have given her. Yet, there is an acknowledgement of what her life could have been, had she been given the chance to explore and enrich her promising capacities.

There had been a particular discussion with my grandmother, that I remember, wherein she had told me that when my mother had reached the expected 'marriageable' age she had fought fiercely to shelter her from the outpouring of proposals that had been sent her way. She wanted to give my mother the time to truly explore herself. She had wanted to give my mother the time that she hadn't been given herself.

It is the stories, such as these, that make me feel such profound depths of gratitude that my own parents don't expect such a marriage of me. As I have gotten older, the idea of marriage has lost its appeal. The sacrifices that I have seen the women in my life make, in order to provide such futures for their children, are some that I struggle to comprehend. I don't know if I ever will be ready to give so much up, as they have done for me.

Maybe that makes me selfish. A lot of women are branded with such a title for their refusal to marry and have children. Yet, I don't tend to view it that way. I want to live a life that satisfies the things that my mother and grandmothers would have wanted. If I change my mind, then so be it - but at least I have been gifted with the wonders of having a choice. Something that they, undeservingly, didn't have, and it is a gift that I refuse to take for granted.

So no, I don't hate arranged marriages anymore. Now that I am older, I understand that if an individual wants to enter such an agreement, then they have every right to do so.

As long as they have a choice.

A Note on The Capacity of Humanity

Humanity has the potent capability to enlighten and yet also to horrify. With the recent deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd - humanity has irrevocably driven my heart into a state of utter shock and despondency.

If I think about it closely, I become consumed by the relentless circulation of my inner thoughts and anger at such tragedies. As individuals we have the capacity for such good, yet why must some choose to use their positions of power for such evil?

The plight of people of colour, to have their rights protected as closely as their white counterparts, has been an issue that has existed for a time that has undoubtedly been too long. It astounds me that a society that can be brought together by some truly remarkable things can still remain divided on something so trivial as the varying pigments on a fellow human being's skin.

I struggle to fathom that this is what we have resulted in. No matter what you believe in, about the origin of mankind, surely it can be agreed that we were made to be more than what we have become.

The deaths of those three individuals, amongst many others, reflects the ever present disparity in the way society views the value of human life, even today. My heart harbours a certain ache when I think of the abundance of lives that have been lost at the hands of figures of such power. Figures that are supposed to play the role of our protectors. Today, those figures have let us down.

I don't want to let the names of the people who have lost their lives to become mere numbers. They deserve to be more and we owe them a degree of duty to ensure that the loss of their lives strays from being in vain.

There can be no pride in remaining complacent in the face of such miscarriages of justice. I don't think, as humans, we can afford to retain any degree of pride at our - supposed - advancing society, if we consistently tend to falter when called to dispel the heart breaking realities faced by individuals across the globe.

So what can we do? We can sign petitions, we can listen. We can educate and be educated. We can make noise. A lot of noise. In fact, I think that we have to obligation to make as much noise as we possibly can. So much noise, that silence on such matters no longer becomes tolerated. No longer becomes accepted or treated as a normality. So much noise that, if one really listens, in the echoes of our voices we will be able to hear the names of the victims that have fallen before us. You see, if we make enough noise, we have a chance of making sure that one day - some where down the line, things like this won't happen again.

In a society where individuals abuse their power for such evils, we must rise and use our equalling capacity to instil justice. 

Women Aren't Fruit

The definition of a fruit is ' the sweet and fleshy product of a tree or other plant that contains seed and can be eaten as food'. For awhile, fruits have also been used as a means to categorize the female body into different types. They have been used, perhaps, as a tool to instruct women on how they should react to their own bodies, and this is a practice that is in a desperate need of being stopped. 

There are many attempts out there to put labels on what we know to be the undeniably diverse form of the female body. The ever present need to scrutinise the female form has existed for what seems to have been an eternity, and what lingers is an aching need to conform and become apart of what is constantly presented to be the ideal. Yet, what is the ideal?

The earliest memory that I can recall, wherein I was left to question the natural shape of my body, was when I was aged nine. From what I remember, I was with two other girls in the school bathroom and we were stood in front of this long mirror, posing. By chance, these two girls lacked even one ounce of the puppy fat that I had readily accumulated, and I can remember staring at it idly as they both twirled around the floors outside the toilet stalls.

What strikes me most about this memory is not only how young I was when it happened, but the fact that I can still remember it. Something, that otherwise would have been meaningless, has been carved into the innermost parts of my brain, purely because of the way it had made me feel. I doubt those other girls remember that moment, or at least not in the way that I do.

It hurts to think that the female body has been picked at to the point where even young girls struggle to feel beautiful.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this all is the fact that no one fully knows what the 'perfect' female body would look like. Everybody appears to yearn for different things, so why have we not reached a point where we universally accept that every single form on this earth is worthy of being both loved and cherished?

When I was slightly younger than what I am now, I remember turning to internet - in search of guidance as to what I should wear in order to 'best flatter my figure' (a.k.a. to hide my chest) . What I was met with were an array of videos that dictated what women of certain body types should and shouldn't wear. Back then, it had been almost hypnotic. I had felt the need to abide by these unspoken laws, and if that meant rejecting my beloved turtle necks then I was ready to be compliant.

There was some point down the line when I began to recognise the flaws that were inherently laced into the words of those supposed 'wise women'. Every word that they would utter seemed to be in relation to hiding something. And it occurred to me that the things they would insist needed to be concealed, were the very things that made an individual a human being.

It made me wonder about something. It made me wonder about why there was an apparent necessity to hide the beauty within the realism of such imperfections - if that is even what they should be called.

Now that I am older, I can appreciate the wonders of the human body that I had been blind to before. I strive to cherish it, and I work hard to appreciate the abundance of things that it gives me the capacity to do.

It isn't always easy. Moments before writing this I had stared in the mirror, wide-eyed at the prospect of a faint crease embedding itself into the depths of my face and somewhat alarmed at the light lines that peppered the inner parts of my thigh. Yet, I told myself that each of those marks held a potent significance. I told myself that even if they weren't beautiful in society's eyes, they were beautiful in mine. And that was all that mattered.

The painting that I have attached above was something that I created in the early parts of the quarantine period. It had started as a means to ridicule those vacant labels that get thrown around, such as 'pear shape' and 'apple shape', yet when I was finished with it - I realised that it had become something more. To me, it had become a symbol of unity and inclusivity, one that rejected any attempt to categorise the mesmerising beauty of  the diverse female form.

It is apparent to me now, more than ever, that women should never have been likened to fruit. Women are not fruit, we are human. And that is something that we should celebrate and revel in, rather than letting it be something that we strive to conceal. 

... And The Shape of My Body

As, perhaps, a second part to my prior post - I wanted to expand on the way in which society reacts to the female form. 

I would regard myself as a fairly early bloomer. My chest began developing in the late parts of primary school, and from there my growth only escalated. It had been something that I had always been hugely uncomfortable with. A side effect of being the early bloomer amongst your friends comes in the form of an unspoken embarrassment of feeling like a larger, more clumsy version of them. For me, at least, I hated the accumulation of feelings that made me envision myself as a whale in comparison to their dainty frames. 

And it just would not stop. I can remember being so overwhelmingly conscious of my figure - in particular, my chest - even in the beginning of secondary school. I would hide myself in shapeless jumpers and tops that had high necklines, regardless of whether I liked the clothes or not. I didn't want anyone to become aware of the fact that my chest was growing. Despite it being a completely uncontrollable entity, I was ashamed of what it would make others think.

At that age, we were still imbued with childish naivety which caused us to associate revealing clothes with promiscuity, and promiscuity with loose morals. I felt that I could only 'get away' with showing the tiniest bit of cleavage when I became older, when a miraculous veil was uplifted - indicating that showing my body for what it was, was okay again. 

Through those years, I became more confident with my body. There was still a bundled loathing directed towards my chest, yet I felt more comfortable with wearing a dress without tights and wearing tops that would go off of my shoulder. Yet ultimately, I still felt restricted in what I could wear. I still refrained from showcasing my chest to any degree, and I would google different ways of making the upper part of my body less prominent. 

There comes a relief in saying that I have passed those days. Whilst there is still the occasional hesitance to wear tops that may be deemed as too revealing, I now feel confident in wearing (mostly) whatever it is that I desire. 

If I think about why, I cannot help but feel my heart tinge slightly. When I was younger, I felt the need to hide my shape from anyone and everyone. I would cover myself to such overwhelming degrees, even if the heat outside was sweltering. All because I didn't want to be overtly sexualised for things which I was never able to control.

There was a time in school, a few months ago - even at my age of seventeen - where I was reprimanded for my choice of clothing. It had been my birthday and I was wearing this pretty lilac wrap top to school. It adhered to the school's uniform policy, and I had tied it in a way that it wasn't even remotely revealing. I had seen other girls at school get away with wearing things that showed off more. Yet, whilst walking past a senior member of school I was told that it was 'too revealing' and that I shouldn't wear it again. I was hugely mortified. The top hadn't shown any cleavage, unlike certain tops I had seen other girls wear, yet because of my larger bust I was instantly sexualised and put down for my choice of clothing. I understand that we should respect the regulatory school uniform policies, yet with the female form being so diverse, I would expect more sensitivity to be reflected in such rules and regulations. That entire day I felt uncomfortable and exposed, when I should have felt confident and secure in my body.

The sexualisation of young girls makes my mouth sour. Every time we tell a young girl that they need to 'cover up', we feed into the idea that being comfortable in their bodies is a liberty that they have not been given yet. We feed into the idea that showing one's body is something we should be ashamed of. And we feed into the idea that the minute a girl enters puberty, her body becomes an object that others can freely sexualise. We are effectively rejecting the basic principle of autonomy. 

A lot of people may argue that younger girls don't need to show 'so much' of themselves. That they are at a tender age where it is unnecessary for them to be wearing clothes that one my regard as exposing. Yet, this merely causes me to question why young boys aren't told the very same thing. 

I'll tell you why. It is because we attach something inherently sexual to the very core of the female form. We are unable to view it for what it is. There is an overt need to view it as a sexual commodity rather than for its biology. 

The implications of this leads to a heightened spread of rape culture and victim blaming. The female body is viewed as an entity that can't help but allure the attentions of predatory males and as a result, women are expected to assume the responsibility to cover themselves ( as to not accentuate their inherent sexuality further ) rather than men being expected to educate themselves on both consent and the damning nature of sexual objectivation. 

There is an apparent need for a radical shift in the way that we view the female anatomy. Without such change, the female body will remain as something that is viewed merely for sexual gratification, and that is something that I find - as I am sure that you will, too - hugely difficult to stomach. 

On The Colour of My Skin ...

As a person of colour within a Western society, I have always been aware of the components of my being that have made me different to the masses around me. I can recall some of the first moments in my early years where I felt othered.

Ofcourse, there were the clichés. With my complexion being compared to both faeces and dirt, in the early parts of my life, there was a difficulty that I harboured in accepting who I was and the appearance that I had inherited. 

In the later parts of primary school, I suppose it was no longer acceptable for such comments to be made and thus there were no more outright comparisons. Though, that didn't mean that the acknowledgement of my differences stopped. 

In the height of childlike courting, with handmade Valentines and plain declarations of 'love', I would merely watch on the periphery. Now, I can admit that my shyness perhaps contributed to that, yet there is also a part of me that just knows that the colour on my skin was also a deciding factor. The thought of someone liking me was treated as a light joke. The unspoken yet vehement rejections of the idea appeared much more inflamed than they did with any of the other girls. 

At those times, I hadn't really minded. The occasional sting was muffled by the fact that I had no interest in such things either. And perhaps, and it is this that makes my older and wiser heart hurt slightly, I didn't mind because I thought it was rational for white boys to never find a girl of colour attractive. I had thought that it was a given. 

We all have our preferences, that is the inevitable effect of human nature. Though, it occurs to me that from a young age we are somewhat psychologically programmed to find that attraction in people who remind us of ourselves. Who remind us of what we know. And though this appears harmless, the perpetuation of these ideas can fracture the confidence and self belief of many young individuals - especially within a society that praises girls for their beauty before their wit or their intellect. 

The first time I realised that a person of colour could be seen as attractive was when I joined secondary school. Having been the coloured outlier for the vast majority of my life, my entrance into secondary school was almost cinematic. There was something powerful about that change in my social scenery. Being around people who looked like versions of myself, for the first time, instilled a feeling of belonging within my bones. Something that I hadn't had for what had seemed to be an eternity. 

Yet with that came the burst of further insecurities. With this new acknowledgement that people of colour could be deemed pretty, there came a sinking realisation that there were perhaps more flaws that I had embodied other than what I had intially blamed to be the mere tint of my skin. I would pick at my nose, my mouth, my eyes and my hair. My weight or my figure and sometimes, ashamedly, the shade of my complexion.

The latter is of big controversy. With both brands and beauty ideals ingraining the idea that being fair is lovely, many girls struggle with their darker complexions. I consider myself lucky that my relatives have never been advocates of such beliefs. This meant that my dwelling, on this particular part of myself, was fleeting. Yet, it did compel me to reckon with the inner wirings of such a message.

This compulsion to be lighter undeniably stems from the need to succumb to Western beauty ideals. Rather than embracing the rich beauty of such potent colour, women regard it necessary to lighten their skin with creams, make-up and filters. 

I had a really thought provoking discussion with a friend, recently, about the influence of Western beauty ideals on the way we inherently perceive beauty. She had read an interesting study that showed that when observing a selection of people, of a race that is not our own, we instinctively find the individuals that hold features - that agree with Western ideals - to be more attractive. 

What we often fail to see, by remaining compliant with the spread of such beliefs, is that we are telling a large quantity of girls that they are not beautiful, merely because they do not look like someone else. We are telling them that their natural form is something they should strive to separate themselves from. 

The journey of accepting the colour of my skin is best described in separate stages. The first thing that I needed to accept was that I was not any less deserving of love and affection because of the pigment of my body. I had to acknowledge that I had the same capacity to be beautiful as the girls that I had grown up alongside. 

From there, my progression moved me to become confident in the richness of my colour. To revel in how beautifully it is complimented by gold, saffron and other colours of such vivacity. It was here that the complete rejection of Western beauty ideals was warranted. 

The last point of this journey is a place that I still find myself in. It is the utter rejection of any voice that tells me what I must be to be beautiful. It is the dismissal of the idea that beauty can only be attributed to an individual's physicality. Beauty is a societal construct and we must not let it become anything more than that. We must not let it tell us how we should view, not only ourselves, but others. And we must not let it influence the way we value the separate components of who we are.

It seems apparent to me that in order to live as my own, I have to be one with my own. And with the acknowledgement that there is an enrapturing beauty in almost everything, that is what I intend to become. 

Being One Of The Lucky Ones

When I was a young girl, the promise of education had never been something that was compromised. I was neither held back due to conservative ideals of womanhood nor financial deficiencies. For me, University had never been a 'what if'. With this acknowledgement comes the realisation that there are many privileges that I have unknowingly accumulated throughout my life, due to factors that I have had no influence over. It is a thought that consistently haunts me.

If I think of all the young girls that are out there in the world, the ones who have been denied the right to an education, I feel guilty. If I think of all those girls who have been brutally beaten and persecuted just for having thoughts that challenge the radical systems that they are governed by, I feel guilty. And if I think of the fact that I can write this - without having to worry about the threat of a savage government, I feel guilty. I feel so guilty, that it makes my mind numb and causes tears to leak profusely from my eyes. It just doesn't seem fair, how could it ever seem so?

The negative attitudes towards female education, across the globe, has been something that I have been aware of since I started my secondary education, yet Western media seems to perpetuate a clinical distance between its audience and the reality and thus I would fail to wholly comprehend the gravitas and heart breaking poignancy of it all. Having lived in a society that is somewhat 'past' those archaic beliefs, we appear to be hugely desensitized to such traumatic realities that are faced by many, because it doesn't happen to us anymore. It is no longer something we must witness in our day to day lives. Though, does that mean we should no longer help? Does that mean we should now be blinded by this superficial security and be lulled away from outstretching our hands back to the places where we came from?

As a young woman of colour I am hyper-aware of the considerable advantages that I have garnered as a result of my upbringing being within a liberal society. I know that I am one of the 'lucky ones'.  Often the feeling that I am profiting from something, that I feel that I have never earned, unsettles me. To know that I have the means to pursue my interests when I could have been any one of those other girls, had things been different, is something that serves as an instant break in my thoughts.

I suppose it should motivate me. Make me grateful for what I have got. And it does, I can assure you that it really does. Yet, it feels somewhat ill-minded to merely feel grateful when I am brought to think of thoughts like that. I am always hounded by the thought that I should feel something else. That I should do something else, to make up for these privileges that have fallen into the laps of my own on an array of silver platters.

Earlier today, when I was thinking of this, I came to a slight understanding of these innermost thoughts of mine, I reasoned with my guilt.

In moments like this, feeling guilt before having the opportunity to do something remains futile. I am only a girl of seventeen and I have yet to obtain the chance of spinning the nature of the world within the palms of my hands. The only guilt that should be felt is by the people who have such means on the tips of their delicate fingers, yet remain silent. If I was ever to become that, then I should feel guilty. But not now.

I will grow and I will stand on the frontline for change. That is all I can do. That is all we can do. And that is all that we should do.

If you happen to be one of the lucky ones, as am I, then use your opportunities to cultivate growth and embolden humanity to flourish. Because, as one of the lucky ones, the most powerful thing that we have are our voices and it is this that we should use them for.