From: ssankara@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Sornam Sankara)
Subject: Re: Women in Popular Tamil Magazines
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 22:02:28 GMT



(Continued from my previous posting: 4906, 4934 of soc.culture.tamil- SSP)




Popular Tamil magazines and construction of gender identity
===========================================================

{Gita Wolf, Economic and Political Weekly, Oct 26 (1991)
 Reproduced without permission}


     We had already mentioned that the narratives functioned at two levels:
through titillation, and by reinforcing traditional patriarchal norms.

     That repressed and perverted sexual fantasies are addressed by these
magazines is clear.  KUMKUMAM had brought out an obscene supplement called
`kiLukiLu'  which, whihc literally means 'to titillate'.  Protests by women's
groups provoked the telling responses:  "Why single us out for attack when just
every other Tamil weekly revels in smut ?"

     While the producers of these magazines will be shocked to be told they are
pornographers, their material works on the modes of PORNOGRAPHY.  They
fetishize sexual fantasies and mutilate the female body at will.  The woman is
presented as an object of sexual lust and aggrssion.  Male power aims at
obliterating the `other', the woman, and seek pleasure in her sexual
subservience and pain.

     Tamil weeklies do precisesly this:  Three fourths of the illustrations
depict images of semi-clad heavy busted women.  They frequently have little or
no relevance to the story at hand.  There exists a pool of artists that all
magazines use and the illustrations they produce have remained invariant over
decades.  The code insists that the female body, whatever the story, be
portrayed as `nubile' with an `hour-glass' figure.  Lines and curves might
vary, the color tones might me different, but all the figures manage to appear
interchangeable: full breasted women whose other features and parts of the body
are sketched in to compound the effects produced by the woman's bust.  Even
reputed and intelligent authors whose stories feature in these weeklies from
time to time, do not seem to mind them being illustrated in this way.  This
fetishitic fixation on a woman's breast, along with the obliteration of her
other features, effectively prevents the perception of an individual woman as a
human personality.

     The male illustrator appears to have become a prisoner of his own
dehumanised imagination as he churns out picture after similar looking picture.
Evidently, as letters to the editors in these magazines testify, male readers
find their lewd fantasies gratified.   On one hand, the very monotony of these
illustrations numbs readers' sensiblities to such an extent that not many find
anything objectionable in them.  YET ON THE OTHER HAND, THE NORMALIZATION OF
THESE COARSE PERCEPTION OF WOMEN SOCIALLY SANCTIONS SEXUAL ATTACKS ON THEM IN
REAL LIFE.

     The illustrations reveal other biases as well.  The stories are all set in
Tamil Nadu and the characters are almost always Tamilian.  TAMIL WOMEN, ON THE
AVERAGE, ARE DARK AND STOCKY.  YET THE ILLUSTRATIONS SHOW ANGULAR, FAIR,
CAUCASIAN, NORTHERN, OR UPPER CASTE FACES AND FIGURES.  They are images of a
curious ideal, where dominant status is somehow equated with sexual attraction.




                                        ..... to be continued.