Daily Times

In a very exciting passage in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice Found There, the young Alice meets Humpty Dumpty who is sitting on a wall. In the conversation that follows, there is a thought provoking instance when Humpty Dumpty states, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” It is perhaps one of the most captivating ideas in Carroll’s work. This article seeks to delve into such a human condition, discussing a sensitive issue related to a present controversy in India surrounding female sexuality, desire and consumerism. In doing so, at a deeper level, it tries to probe the elusive reality of words and ideas in a changing world too.

The subcontinent seems to have been facing skin problems lately. Perhaps civilisations have age-related problems too, reaching puberty or old age. Maybe they experience hormonal problems along with identity crises somewhere in life. Under peer pressure or self-experimentation, perhaps they have their own set of social experiences whether good or bad. Somewhere down the lane, they might also think about where life is headed, and what they need to be equipped with to deal with it.

While some Pakistanis are busy today pondering whether Katrina Kaif’s hair removal cream advertisement is somehow ‘hair raising’ or not, in India, a cream named 18 Again has sparked controversy about female sexuality, consumerism and everything that lies in between. The manufacturers of 18 Again say it is a ‘restoration’ cream; ‘India’s first, most advanced, femininity restoring cream’. It enables women to feel ‘untouched’ once again and is ‘the new age product for the new age woman’. Following another recent controversy in which critics slammed a whitening product for women, many critics are raising their eyebrows about the present campaign’s narrative and the media imagery that surrounds it.

As one views the television advertisement of 18 Again in which the heroine, adorned in a sari, dances and sings “Ooh, I feel like a virgin”, Madonna’s epic hit Like a virgin instantaneously springs to mind. “You made me feel shiny and new….like a virgin… touched for the very first time…” sang Madonna so cheerfully and cheekily back in the 1980s. Perhaps many women, to their amazement, have an opportunity of reliving Madonna’s song today. Yet others may think that the pop idol never represented them in the first place.

Central to the debate surrounding the new product is the theme of women’s empowerment. According to Rishi Bhatia, the owner of Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company Ultratech India, which has produced the cream, 18 Again seeks to ‘empower women’. The marketing campaign states, “It is positioned as a brand for the ‘woman on top’. It is a product about woman empowerment” and, somehow, seeks to redefine “the term women empowerment.” While glamorous brand ambassadors are endorsing the product, many feminist groups strongly disagree with the idea, stating that the marketing campaign preys on the potential insecurities of some women, objectifies them, and reflects a typical patriarchal mindset and its prized criterion for women’s bodies. Some are questioning the concept whether women’s empowerment involves just the physical parts of a girl’s body or other things like her intellect, qualifications and talent too. The definition of ‘redefinition’ is being questioned.

“Why the hell should you be tightening anything?” states one angry woman critic. Like other societies across the world, India today contends with the social changes that modernity brings with it, including notions of sexual liberty. It is interesting to see how controversies like the present one reveal the deep disagreements over issues related to women, their lives and their bodies. Such debates also bring to the fore, in many ways, the hypocrisy and double standards that exist in discussing what it means to be an ‘ideal’ woman.

Many ‘v’ words related to women and their sexuality have been under intense debate lately; firstly the veil and now virginity, reflecting flux and multiple perspectives about values, the same word meaning different things to different people. It is just like Alice discussing a poem called “Jabberwocky” with Humpty Dumpty in the story; pretty intertwined.

The ‘personal is political’ yet again. This slogan in feminism was coined by Carol Hanisch in the earliest days of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the US, back in 1969. Since then the feminist movement has covered ground. Or has it? In recent reflections on the 1969 document, Hanisch states something very interesting just like Humpty Dumpty. She says, “A theory is just a bunch of words — sometimes interesting to think about, but just words nevertheless — until it is tested in real life. Many a theory has delivered surprises, both positive and negative, when an attempt has been made to put it into practice.” While the theory of the next worldly ‘seventy virgins’ faces challenges of its own kind in the contemporary world, the 18 Again cream controversy shows how feminist theory is in crisis too. This seems to be the right time for some well needed soul searching.

In the conversation with Alice, Humpty Dumpty, an egg with an attitude, is able to convince her that there is something called an ‘unbirthday present’ that one can receive three hundred and sixty four days of the year. Perhaps the real strength of the egg is how he can reshape attitudes by giving words new meanings and confusing us in the process. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there,” once said Carroll. Amidst the mystification that surrounds us today, we struggle in the dialectic of losing our innocence and regaining it. As humankind struggles with the meanings of words like ‘sexuality’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘purity’, some entrepreneurs in our neighbourhood are busy packaging and marketing virginity. ‘Skin’ seems to be the new buzzword. Looks like the era of Humpty Dumpty is here to stay.

The author teaches Sociology at the University College Lahore (UCL). He can be reached at naqibhamid@gmail.com