With or Without a Bra, the Way You Look at Me Says a Lot About You
I took a decision when my underwire bra snapped open and the wire dug its claws into my skin.
My first time was out of sheer frustration.
The first time, I started work related to the Free the Nipple campaign.
My underwire bra had snapped open and the wire had dug its claws deep into my skin. However, this was nothing compared to the feeling of being ogled at and stripped down, if I were to go bra-less. There was no escaping all of it, if I were to step out of the house, choosing not to wear a bra.
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The Body Shop
The Meat Market Down the Street
How did we get here? How did we arrive at a point where it is so easy to believe that something as natural as a body part is an obvious precursor to censorship and hyper-sexualisation? Can an underwire be an absolute necessity?
There’s something subliminal in all of this that hurts more than the wire under my bra.
Anatomy of a Bra
I have nothing against bras. I simply don't believe in what they stand for. I believe it is merely another way to overtly sexualise a part of us that wasn't meant to be.
Why does a mother need to think twice before breast-feeding her child in public?Instances of her being humiliated keep growing in number.
Our hypocrisy knows no end. There is a veritable treasure-trove of conflicts in the way we see a woman. The gigantic billboards with young girls displayed as mere objects of pleasure don’t seem to bother many, but a mother breast-feeding her child publicly surely does, doesn’t it?
Beauty Lies in the Eyes of the Objectifier
The female body has been subjected to objectification for so long now, that it is hard to see it as anything but a sexual symbol. The more it is altered and projected as perfect and slender, the more it gives rise to a form of self-abasement among countless women.
The idea, that in order to be beautiful one must possess what the world wishes to see, is partly where the problem lies.
Free the Nipple, It Is Time
We are a society that is reeling from the effect of years of deep-rooted patriarchy which has created, cultivated and enforced an idea of the 'ideal' woman.
The way you look at me, says a lot about you.
Free the Nipple is a gender equality campaign that was created in 2012 after Lina Esco started filming ‘Free the Nipple’. While the campaign argues that women should be allowed to bare their nipples in public, we believe the message runs deeper than that. We believe that change starts with acceptance. Acceptance that a woman is not just an object of sexual pleasure. Acceptance that women might be built differently, but they’re still the same.
(Sarah is an independent illustrator based in Ahmedabad. She has been working on women’s issues and gender, seeking to question the status-quo and further the conversation. The above piece, while it voices her own opinions, follows up The Quint’s earlier piece on the overt sexualisation of women’s nipples and the discomforting gaze that clothes and strips a woman in the same breath.)
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