The odd angle

Making up for what? Authored by: Jatin Mathur  A few days ago I was having this conversation with some of my friends and we were talking about make-up and beautification. I argued that make ups are based upon the dissatisfaction with your natural form and based upon an insecurity which is induced by companies. However they said not everyone made-up due to their insecurities, people might feel good in the process of making up or they might want to try new looks. Both the arguments seemed appealing to me. Though the latter argument is also based upon trying to change oneself to fit into a certain type which is validated or approved by people. Even if someone makes up for oneself then one can actually pose this question about very instinct or desire to see oneself with beauty products.  My perspective comes from this dissatisfaction that we all encounter with ourselves where we fail to accept ourselves naturally beautiful. There is this ideal type or benchmark of confident indivi...

Conservation with out Care 9August. World Tribal day. International Day of the World's Indigenous People's  Every time, I attend a workshop or a seminar on any environment-related issue like the conservation of wildlife, forests, climate change, etc. It is always fascinating to ponder over some of the very intriguing questions like, how nature works, how much time it takes to form a drop of water, how much forest are we left with, is sustainable life really possible, what should come first development or environment and if development is coming at the cost of environment, then can we really call it development, what is the actual meaning of development?  Let’s Park these normative questions aside for a moment. Because my purpose here is not to respond to these important normative questions. Rather, through these questions, I want to bring to your focus the importance of bios and the efforts that many environmentalists have put into making us realise the importance of bios and ...

FEMINISM   Feminism is not just the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes nor just a doctrine advocating social , political and all other rights of women equal to those of men. Feminism at its core is about “Equality” - among male , female or even transgender - not “sameness”  (Here it becomes critical to understand that “sameness” does not always means “equality”). The pivotal issue here is about equal right and equal access to opportunities. Feminism as an ideology , does not claim that women are the angles or ‘always victims’ of the pervading inequality. In contrast , feminism argues against un-necessarily placing of women on higher pedestal. Why some people want to get rid of feminism? As, we are inhabitants of a patriarchal society , where it is mostly the women who are being deprived of their basic rights . ( Therefore , we commonly see feminism as synonym of fight for women’s right) and when feminism asks tough questions on our dogma...