Fragile Beauty

The fundamentals of yin and yang are very much visible to the naked eye that the complexity of its existence is embraced rarely. The two extremes are very core that the existence of a spectrum somehow diminishes in its shadow. Among many, one such spectrum is masculinity and femininity, the two primary societal constructs and the ways within which society has perceived them.

Since the onset of the civilizations and assignment of gender roles, the most deliberate division was based upon the physiological features of both the conventional set of genders. The feminine sect was assigned with child rearing, taking care of families, cooking and cleaning as a major part of their constructed functionalities. While the masculine sect was assigned with hunting, farming and anything that revolved around a more aggressive trope.

'Women have been crumbled upon by society' - The statement sounds cliché, but the depth it encompasses is tremendous. Women have been considered many things but the farfetched one would be their independence. The society presumes and praises if their (women's) existence is based upon their fathers, husbands and ultimately, their sons.

The tenderness of women has been personified by poets into objects which symbolize their duality. One such personification is of roses, how very delicate their existence and the sheer feasibility of tearing apart every petal remains the mindset as to how women have been crumbled upon for decades that have passed and for decades to come.

The attire is the most vulnerable part of being a woman, the most judged and regulated part of being a woman and their identity. The saree and the bejeweled bodies of women are considered sophisticated and an accurate representation of the enhancement of their beauty, a compensation provided to them by the patriarchal system for being violated for centuries. The lamps and the light represent multiple mindsets, like the limitation of women’s agendas within the four walls through which they have managed to propagate the brightness and have spread the light around by the gender roles they were struck with. Women have given the knowledge of care, prosperity, love, rearing, thriving etc., to their families and society.

The prestige and power women hold in the Indian context are not less than any other but being given that prestige and power, to reflect that what they have is not something they are entitled for but instead is something that has been bestowed upon them. A rose might have soft petals, but the resistance in the thorns is quite sharp, and it fights back if plucked from its stem, just like the women have been for centuries from the archaic mindsets of the patriarchal systems worldwide.