Beyond the Looking Glass - A Review Report

Beyond The Looking Glass

O9 March 2019 

Ambedkar University, Delhi (Kashmere Gate Campus)

Contributors:

Group 3- Garima Plawat, Nobby Roseatte Uttam and Tuba Firoz

Group 5- Varuna Yadav, Kanika Ahuja and Samarth Grover

Group 9- Dhiman Das, Muskan Khanna and Payal Ghusain

On 09 March 2019, the students of Radical Poetry of Protest and Resistance organized the event “Beyond the Looking Glass” - a day long celebration of raising awareness and opposing the notions of Lookism.  An article on Huffington Post describes Lookism as “ the interpersonal bias and structural disadvantages that accrue to those who are often labeled unattractive, ugly, different or disfigured.” After a point, it is really not people who practice Lookism on others. It’s this systematic indoctrination of always looking perfect, of adhering to the cannon of some great beauty, that the society self destructs. It’s an umbrella term which encompasses in itself all those subtle, nuanced insecurities which each one of us secretly hides. And not just hides, but sometimes unknowingly and knowingly practices on others as well. 

The idea behind the event was an attempt to move beyond the walls we create for ourselves, the ones that oppress us without our realization. Beauty is extremely overrated. We could and should celebrate ‘ugliness’ alongside beauty in order to normalize the supposed flaws and imperfections. And while we are at it we should discard the binaries altogether in the later stages of the protest. 

After finalizing the date, work began with several discussions around how the event should be executed, involving things like finalizing a time and venue, as well as the guest performers to be invited. Soon after smaller teams were divided to be in charge of various sub-events and working departments that included publicity of the event, maintaining a budget, sending out invitations, organizing refreshments, curating the poetry and musical event, deciding on the decorations, providing certificates etc. The venue - a classroom with a stage-like set up with raised steps on which the audiences could sit comfortably and see from the backside as well and the performers could use the stage to perform - was finalized as one that was both comfortable and formal at the same time. After that we contacted with the I.T. Department of our university for mics and sound boxes for the lined up activities.

The event comprised of a certain set of activities organized by the team, an overview of which is mentioned below.

BLINDFOLDING 

The first sub-event was the Blindfolding event. It started with people being Blindfolded and paired up with those whom they had never met before, allowing them a chance to introduce each other without depending upon their appearances as the first impression. Organized in the form of a workshop, the event was an attempt to eliminate the idea of looks and conventional standards of beauty. It was conducted on a relatively smaller scale so as to maintain the intimacy of an event as sensitive as this one and was facilitated by the team itself, not an invited speaker, a step which helped in creating a more comfortable environment for the participants. Questions concerning the way the event would be curated arose soon after the idea came to our minds, for example, “How were we to make people realize that they were being oppressed by the society as well as their own expectations from their body? That their very actions, no matter how small, were triggering and toxic to people around them.” etc. So, we thought of how our perception would change if we choose to ignore the physical looks of a person. That was how the inception of blindfolding came into being. The sub-event we aimed at was supposed to subvert the idea that 'what one looks like is what actually constitutes our personality', meanwhile erasing the concept of going beyond that Looking Glass. The event also aimed at opening a direct conversation about lookism with the audience and how it affects everyone at an individual level. The discussion included questioning the idea of conforming the minorities into the agendas of the majority. However, when an oppression becomes so normalized that it ceases to be an oppression, that's where it should be thoroughly investigated. Lookism is a personal tyranny. It comes from within and affects all. We visualised a platform where people would talk about their personal experiences, and learn to encounter Lookism head on, would find ways to reflect and to dissociate, especially after experiencing an understanding of the self and the other through the Blindfolding Activity, rather than inviting speakers for the same. We tried to create a platform that would provide a space for sharing experiences to which others may relate and cope together.

The activities were concerned with making the participants talk about things they like, their interests and so on. They were asked to guess about the personality traits of their partner and the physical features. After this they were asked to open their blindfolds and look at their partners. The aim was to make them realize the difference in what is perceived about someone when lookism is in action and when it is not, in turn to realise the everyday impact lookism has on us.

As the event started, we received a lot of queries regarding what exactly was supposed to done in this particular event. To most of these, we tried to remain as ambiguous as we could in order to let each person experience the event as we had envisioned. As students were ushered in, and taken to their designated spots, we could feel their apprehension and vulnerability. It was an event which tested the utter dependence on the eyes to experience everyday lives. One of the participants made a very important remark "In this event, each person was rendered disabled in a way”. Indeed, with vision cut off temporarily, participants began to explore their other senses as well. This exposed how heavily our physical vision impacts almost all our judgements of others, indoctrinations arise out it. Lookism is a process equally affecting both, the oppressor and the oppressed; making one or the other a victim. But it takes certain tough calls for them to realise that they can be the harasser as well. This could only happen when a wall was broken around them, thus, the blindfolding.

The experience of the event for one group that was faintly acquainted is paramount to understand the very dynamics of Lookism. One of the partners shared, "It was actually exciting to think about meeting someone without seeing them. When I was made to sit next to this person, we began talking about our favourite poem, movie, songs and so on. It took me 5 minutes to recognize her voice but I decided to keep quiet because I was not sure if she knew me and I wanted at least one of us to experience the main motive behind this whole event. Then suddenly she said, "I know who you are". We both then talked about the few meetings we had and based on that, we were describing each other's features, dressing style and personality. It was more about memory and how suddenly those two moments when we had ever met, which might have lost somewhere will always remain alive in my mind.” This utter reliance on our perception of anyone is stark here. It is as if we have internalized the act of processing the images of a person first, before their true self. This pair did not try to go beyond each other's appearance. Neither did they create different methods of perceiving each other. Rather they relied on whatever perception they had of each other and built up their assumptions. Of course, this very activity demanded a subconscious realisation of the negativity of such mannerisms, which often goes unreflected in our daily lives.

The other pairs, who were not aware of their partner’s identity, found themselves both apprehensive and liberated. The only sense they could use was ears. That broke apart the very structures of media, beauty standards, etc which create a certain cannon of conventional body and beauty. When the eyes are removed from the equation, a whole world of experiences open up. Participants found themselves sharing their insecurities and dreams. One can then understand why people are more at ease with sharing their lives with a total stranger online than people around them, for we are so ensnared with preconceived notions of others that to think otherwise becomes a cumbersome task for us. Blindfolding event challenged that very process. A liberation of a kind was achieved. Multitudes of oppressions were brought into light along with numerous ways to tackling them, all under the umbrella term of Lookism. A protest rippled throughout each participant as they peeled off their stereotypes, conceptions, judgements as the blindfold embraced them. They reached out to people around them, not tainted with Lookism but with a genuine curiosity to know and understand.

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

Rewriting song lyrics might seem like harmless fun at the first glance, but the act of parodying  is in itself an act of protest, more so since the topic we wanted to protest against was lookism. Lookism functions not only in social gatherings but also in private, when we are traveling alone, listening to songs which promote a certain kind of beauty, which objectifies people and reduces them to the waist size 28 inches and a weight of 47 kgs, or how blue eyes could be the sole criteria to be attracted to a person.

Music is a very effective medium for protest as can be determined from the innumerable examples of protest songs which were major influences in many social movements like Black Lives Matter or Civil Rights Movement, and yet it is almost disheartening how Bollywood music has always been biased towards songs which objectify people and reduce them to just their physical beauty. Therefore, in order to subvert these notions, we decided to use the very lyrics which promote toxic ideas and rewrite them so that the problematics of the songs can be recognized and highlighted. One of the objectives of the music event was to create an ambience of comfort through collectively singing the reworked lyrics. For this purpose, the lyrics were projected on a screen during the performance so that the audience could actively engage and participate in the performance.

The songs selected ranged from explicit to implicit usage of lookism. Not only this, but the songs were also taken from different times, so that it could be seen how Bollywood has, through the decades, continued to influence and define the standards of beauty. While other kinds of oppressions usually take a few years to manifest itself, lookism through Bollywood songs is fed to the little kids even before they have properly learned to talk in complete sentences. It is not uncommon for a little child to be seen dancing to songs like lakk 28 kudi da 47 weight kudi da. Thus as the kids grow up, they do not recognize this oppression as something external, it comes to them as naturally as speaking.

One of the songs chosen for the performance was ‘Yeh Chaand sa roshan chehra’ which has been immensely popular even in contemporary time. The song lyrics suggest a very Europeanized standard of beauty with “roshan chehra”, “Jheel si neeli aankhein” and “sunehri zulfein”. In the process of rewriting, we intended to subvert this ideal by simply de-compartmentalizing the European beauty ideals. So the lyrics were changed to,

Na yeh chand sa roshan chehra

Na zulfo ka rang sunehra

Na jheel si neeli aankhein

Phir bhi raaz hai inmein gehra

Taarif karu kya uski,

Jisnein tumhe bnaaya

Along with this subversive reworking of the lyrics, we also wanted to critique the negative influence of social media on the perception of the body. One cannot dismiss how much the “hashtag goals” of social media platforms affect the thinking process and act as catalysts to engineer certain type of body as the convention. Thus, following lyrics were written:

Ye socio-cultural norms se       

teri soo-rat ko parakhte hai

Inhe koi sikhaaye ye zaalim

lookism practice karte hain-2

Ye hashtag bodygoals ko

filter karke toh dekho

Aise insta life ke against tum

Critical hokar toh dekho

Taarif karo phir uskiiiii

Jisne tumhe bnaaya.

We used the song ‘Pappu can’t dance saala’ to look at how masculinity is seen in Bollywood songs. This song is exemplary in bringing forth how masculine is almost always synonymous with macho and muscular body type. This ideal is further translated in the marital culture as synonym to the most eligible bachelor. This is the aspect which we thought of while reworking the lyrics of the song. It was also important to us that we highlight how in the marriage system, it is the women who suffer the most oppressive beauty policing in order to become the “eligible” bride. This was achieved by making “Pappu” as the representative figure of the patriarchal marital culture who demands a “snow white face” and is “dakiyanoosi”.

The participation of the audience was quite encouraging and some of them even started dancing in the middle of the song, which initially left us a little surprised, but on reflecting, we feel somewhat satisfied that we were able to provide a safe space where the audience could feel comfortable with their bodies and celebrate this fact. Most of them sang along with the songs and some of them told us after a couple of days that the rewritten lyrics were still going on in their heads.

The event, however, was not perfect. We had not memorized the lyrics of the songs by heart and that is why we had to break eye contact with the audience repeatedly. This was not a significant hindrance to the performance since everyone was reading the lyrics from the screen, but nevertheless, it could have been improved upon.

Had there been musicians for all the songs then they could have been recorded and uploaded on social media, thus, transcending the boundaries of the classroom and carrying the idea to more people. Since the audience participated in the singing process, they were able to retain some of the new lyrics after the performance, but there might have been a greater impact had they been listen to the reworked songs later. However, even this idea has to be taken with a pinch of salt since the objective of this particular section was not to provide good music which could be heard later but to encourage the people to come together and realize the harm which these supposedly harmless lyrics can have, and to think in an alternate manner so that in future they can be aware about the kind of mentality which is being fed to them through songs.

PANEL DISCUSSION

Intricately woven into the concept of “Lookism” is how people perceive the sexuality of an individual. Over centuries, the society has formed preconceived notions about how a particular gender must portray themselves. In order to delve deep into the subject of the external contours of an individual’s body and uncover the extent to which it impacts the people in one’s surroundings, we chose Avali Khare, co-convenor of Ambedkar University Delhi’s Queer Collective and Ray, an LLB student from Delhi University who identifies as a trans-woman,  bringing together two people who were not “renowned” or “professional” and all the more relatable.

  

The panel succeeded in establishing the fact that there were remarkable differences that could be traced between someone who was ‘aware’ of the gender discriminations that happened in the society versus an individual who was sensitized about the same and wanted to bring about a change. This aspect highlighted the fact that there are people in the society who talk about “lookism” and problems associated with it but there are few who adopt those philosophies in real life and try to eradicate such an issue.

As the panellists talked about instances where they had been discriminated against in these familiar spaces, an anxiety was noticed amidst the audience for they were left rapt when they realised their own mistake in not having noticed and deeply contemplated about such instances that had been so persistently taking place in their immediate surroundings. Avali shared her experiences within the AUD campus and Ray expressed her encounter with a teacher from the Law faculty, Delhi University, who despite teaching ‘Gender Justice’ did not accept Ray as being a trans-woman and continued to converse with her with a male pronoun. There were other people from the audience as well who shared their experiences with teachers inside the AUD campus, where, despite being a professor of ‘Gender and Psychology’, the teacher was transphobic and did not want to include the study of transgender people in the classroom. Hence, the event was able to stress on the idea that the educational institutions themselves lacked in adequately sensitizing students regarding gender issues, and therefore highlighted a need to protest against the same.

The panel made a considerable attempt to share their experiences of instances that took place outside the spaces of the University, to show how the violence committed on the bodies is a public affair. Living up to the spirit of how ‘personal’ is truly political, Ray discussed how people threatened her on the basis of her sexual identity, on the Metro stations and in public washrooms. She expressed how the CISF personnel at Metro stations didn’t allow her to pass through the men’s checking post for she was dressed in a saree, while the women’s checking personnel denied her entry for she didn’t have “that” (referring to her bust). She also mentioned, how men showed their genitals to her, when she accessed the men’s washroom. The other panellist Avali also mentioned instances where, just on the basis of her looks, she is often asked by women inside the Women’s compartment in the Metro to move out.

The panellists managed to break the glass of ignorance and lack of vigilant observation which many people undergo in an attempt to unveil some of the instances of the immediate exploitation of the self that happens around individuals. This discussion primarily brought forth the heteronormative matrix that unfolds behind the dynamics of dressing oneself. It was observed how merely a change of clothes could make an individual pass as a ‘Man’ or ‘Woman’ and how there was no space for the third gender amidst these binaries. Especially in an era where there is a globalised effort to highlight the fluidity of the vast spectrum of the idea of 'gender'; such first hand narratives pinpoint the need for a change in perceptions at grass root levels. Thus, the event attempted to deconstruct Lookism by unearthing the 'other’ lens held on by the victims themselves.

Coinciding with this argument was the discussion regarding the portrayal of transgenders and queer people through the cultural industry. There were discussions regarding how the character of a trans-woman on screen is presented through a cis man. This helped the organizers tie the event as a coherent one, for the discussion relating to how a woman, after adopting a different gender identity is no longer considered a desirable individual. Also,  the ideals of  ‘beauty’ that a woman adopts are shaped by the desires of ‘men’ in the society. The theme of this conversation which closely linked the media and the politics of gender, was an extension to the previous event, ‘Musical Performance’, where we had brought Bollywood songs and critiqued their representation of women by sanitizing the lyrics.

Continuing with the same argument, the panellists argued against the mainstream representation of queer identities. While there is lot of politics that goes behind deciding the limits of 're-presentation' on screen, there is a simultaneous need for at least some kind of representation. Through this panel discussion, we tried to protest against the authoritative structures who choose to (re)present their own interpretations of the experiences to which they do not have a first hand access. This leads to look at these on- screen representations as a synecdoche for the overall state of the concerned marginalized identities. The panel attempted to protest against forming such generalizations, and the socio-cultural-political role of media in spreading the same biases amongst the masses.

Apart from this, the panellists also related the idea of Lookism to the discourse of Mental health. While the participants shared their own experiences of getting mental health aid and subsequently feeling disappointed about the same; the panellists observed how the foundation of such social institutions are themselves mired in exclusionary paradigms and therefore one cannot expect adequate support from the Doctors either. Through the event, we tried to protest against the ‘lingual structures' that are  indoctrinated with oppressive lexicons and are therefore unable to truly sympathise with struggles faced by several marginalized identities. On a similar paradigm, the questions were raised as to whether the prescriptions, operations etc. suggested for bringing the edged out identities to the centre are oppressive or not. While there is always a choice to go for these operations however these choices are themselves guided by the domineering heteronormative socio-cultural laws. Thereby, resistance to the same becomes necessary.

As people opened up about their own experiences and talked about the relation between discourses of gender and biology, the stage took an innovative form; for it presented an unconventional way of providing an equally inclusive environment to the ideas of both the panelists as well as the participants. This allowed us to realize a major factor in the path of 'protesting' , that is, solidarity in its truest, most literal form. The panelists were able to connect with the participants very well and encouraged them to feel free to share any kind of  minor or major instances of oppression or exploitation that they may have faced because of their choice of carrying themselves in a particular way. 

However even as the participants chose to share their personal experiences, the organizers made sure that none of them got uncomfortable in any manner.

Such exercise had a dual impact on the overall event. While it helped in making the event a more open and liberal space, as is oftentimes seen as one of the hidden goals of providing a potential space to protest, on the other hand, this resulted in mismanaging the specific time limit that was to be stuck on to for each sub event. Although the organizers tried their best to intervene in the discussion and manage it without sounding intrusive and yet serve the purpose of steering the event to it's 'pre-planned' end. 

Concluding on a commemorative note for the ones who had been fatally erased for resisting against the dominant canonical choices regarding their looks, gender, sexuality etcetera, the panellists talked about how Living itself becomes a form of Resistance when oppressive canonical structural foundations are so pertinent that one can never escape it completely. When one has to go through one or other kind of trauma every day and still face up to a new oppressive reality the next day, then the survival itself substitutes the idea of Resistance and Protest. 

The panel discussion was successful in touching up on various other debates related to lookism such as the politics of language, complicated, conflicted attempts to justify or validate one’s choice of living in a society that fails to acknowledge the wide, often unspoken range of harassments faced by the marginalized identities on a daily basis. All these issues were discussed in graphic details and brought forth the various ways and levels on which lookism operates and the way any of these levels cannot be prioritised as one over the other. The idea of the event was to weave together the stories of these victims into a protest against the indoctrination of traditions that define the ideals of ‘beauty'. The discussion successfully managed to bring to the foreground these (un)noticed forms of Lookism and link it to the debate of 'righteousness' of one’s choice of looks and individual personality.

One of the challenges faced by the organizers was to overcome the 'closed' nature of this protest. Since the ambience of the room , full of resisting voices needs to taken out to a larger mass of people, who are unable to access the space. However this does not take away the event's success to inspire change in several mind-sets to look closely at the often unrecognised psychological-emotional-physical 'harms' perpetrated by various institutionalized structures; as they go on to disguise their actions through constructions of normativity.

POETRY PERFORMANCES

Keeping in mind the way the event flowed through the day, the Poetry Performances were an ideal choice for the finale. The event worked towards raising awareness and initiating conversation through the Blindfolding, which was followed by a realization of the extent of normalization of Lookism that happened through the reworked song lyrics. This also gave the audience a taste of the liberation that was encompassed in the potential to challenge the norm. The Panel Discussion took the event from the surface level to a more nuanced and deeper understanding of the gravity of the situation. This also gave people a chance to embody and take ownership of their personal narratives for the first time during the day, giving them the authority and the confidence to share their story with pride. The final event, the Poetry Performance, which included performances by 9 poets who have been a part of the expanding spoken word poetry movement in Delhi, gave the event the only element it was missing - the power of articulation. The idea of bringing poetry to the stage gave the audience a sense of the possibilities of storytelling, and the potential of those very stories to inspire. It also gave the audience a better understanding of the culture of performance poetry, and the way its power differs from poetry that resides on a page.

Spoken Word Poetry, or the art of performance poetry, has been flourishing, both competitively and otherwise, in various parts of the city over the last few years, attracting young aspiring and ambitious poets from schools and colleges to bring forth their poems, as poet and educator Sarah Kay puts it, that demand to be showcased on a stage rather than being left sitting on a piece of paper. The use of spoken word poetry in the sense of the aesthetic protest - one that uses art as a weapon to raise awareness about and to oppose the status quo of political propaganda - became the central factor for curating such an event as part of the day long celebration against the oppressing standardized notions of beauty and body image. 

All the poets came in solidarity to support our theme and event. The theme given to the poets was ‘Personal Oppressions’, revolving around the obstacles we ourselves create in our way well before the society around us gets a chance to. The theme asked the poets to draw upon oppressions prevalent in society and to call upon instances where they felt their understanding of the society worked to oppress them just as efficiently as the society itself, i.e., to acknowledge and articulate narrative of oppression that were inflicted on the self, by the self. The stage offered a chance to both, established poets and rising performers to express their personal oppressions, the everyday commute in the political circus, and our attempts at grasping life. 

Poets brought forth their personal experiences intertwined with the larger notions of oppression and violence in society, giving the audience heart melting and nerve wracking narratives to hold on to. The poetry brought to the stage was fierce, diverse and vastly unapologetic. It presented topics such as an homage to a laughter otherwise considered “too loud”, to love poems for the self, to a loss of homes and homeliness, and finally to larger contexts of the suffocation of the common folk in the wave of increasing political propaganda. 

The crowd was welcoming and empathetic to say the least. Despite being the last event of the day, and following something as mentally and emotionally demanding as the Panel Discussion, the Poetry Performances still managed to gather and retain a larger audience. The audience, as is customary to the slam, was highly participatory and involved very intrinsically in the event, talking back to the host in between each performance, and snapping at lines from poems that touched them, as well as showering and drowning poets in applause. 

The success of the event lied in the little things. A part of the success needs to be attributed to how well all the performers got along, creating an air of mutual admiration and respect that was contagious and largely responsible for the positivity in the atmosphere. A much larger reason for the success of the event rested in the patient and highly receptive audience we as a group were privileged to have, an audience that stuck around for the entire duration of the event, felt comfortable in the space created for them and cooperated and participated with vigour and zeal in all that was organized. Finally, it also lied in the compatibility as well as the diversity of expertise present in the team, making an event as diverse as this a possibility. The one downfall was our inability to stick to the timeslots, which had us running almost an hour late by the end of it, something we hope to improve on the next time we attempt to organize something like this. 

CONCLUSION

The event, which dealt with something as tangible in our everyday lives as Lookism, brought forth a terminology we had normalized without ever knowing about it. The most common response to our event description was an epiphanic reaction of finally having a name for this oppression everybody felt as they walked out the door. The event stemmed from largely personal narratives, which made it only fair to keep the event as intimate as possible. The conversations that arose during the course of the day together worked towards challenging the normalized notions of Lookism, working towards creating an acceptance of the self the way it exists, not criticizing its shortcomings with respect to the expectations and standards of the society. The team comprised of people who had all felt oppressed by the concept of Lookism in their daily lives at one point or another, and their personal narratives played a major role in determining the sub-events and the way the day flowed. A major task for us to tackle as a team was to create a coherent event with ideas as diverse as ours. This required everybody to be sensitive to each idea that was brought to the table, knowing well enough that it came from a place the team member felt strongly about. It also required multiple modifications to the same idea, so as to incorporate as many diverse opinions as possible, while keeping the overarching theme and its coherence a priority. It was also important for us to make sure that each event received its due respect and one event did not weigh over the other. As a team, our greatest feat was a well balanced ambience, comfortable yet vulnerable, that we were able to create and uphold for the entire duration of the event, which gave the audience something to hold on to as they walked out of the venue at the end of the event. The fact that the event lasted 1.5 hours longer than it should have was both an achievement and a shortcoming. With audience members willing to stay and engage in conversation for longer than they were expected to is always a heartwarming feeling as organisers, however, the subsequent delay of events which affected the later events is a shortcoming on our part, which may not have reflected well on the invited guest poets, as their event started much later than was informed. However, this is something to be taken as points to be improved upon, and this balance of sticking to the schedule while also not breaking the momentum of the event is one we will especially focus on the next time we choose to organize such an event.