Saturday, September 21, 2013

What Not to Wear...to a South Delhi Club

A friend of mine recently posted a woeful column on FB about how he has been refused entry at so-called "fashionable establishments" because he showed up in Indian wear.  Now, I have a few male friends who really rock Indian clothes.  And when I say Indian clothes, I mean the full white kurta-pajama set.  And yes, upon occasion, I have mocked them for looking slightly neta-esque. (Particularly once wintertime arrives and those delightful wool vests emerge.)  Interestingly, many of them at one point secretly aspired to neta-hood; that's probably why we're friends, and probably also why I like that look.  It suggests a latent and septuagenarian type of political power, much like an ill-fitting Brooks Brothers suit once did in the secret corridors beneath the US Capitol.

However, the real Indian-wear prize for men probably goes to a former colleague of mine, who used to wear slightly rumpled kurtas with the careless finesse of a Frenchman tossing a scarf over his shoulder (do Frenchmen do this? Probably not. Sorry, France).  My colleague was very thin, very young, very well-read, and a real Jacobin. I hope my fondness for his whole aura derives from genuine liking, and not (despite the many long hours that I, like any well-meaning post-colonial PIO, logged with the collected works of Ed Said) some holdover Orientalist fetish. I should add, for those who need any further explanation, that he gradated from JNU.

When it comes to ethnic-wear, the decision "To wear or not to wear" is fraught, and if I were to be honest, I am no stranger to this internal debate. Growing up, I wore Indian clothes to my very American but very post-racial middle and high schools, on every Diwali.  Some people dislike the attention of being a cultural ambassador, my philosophy was to run with it.  All day long people would come up to me and ask me what I was wearing and why I was wearing it, and I would regale them with stories of how special I was. I probably enjoyed the pomp more than the circumstance.  I also enjoyed the pseudo-political implications of wearing Indian clothes in white men's country, although keep in mind that the tiny, overeducated oddity that is Montgomery County is officially 15% Asian and unofficially 18% Jewish. So really, it was more of a gesture.

In Delhi, I've opted for Westerns, but somewhat grudgingly.  I am no stranger to the Orientalist allure. The pages of Indian Vogue abound with photos of tall, styled, bronzed women wearing blouse-less gossamer and gold saris, looking like they just got up from a tryst with James Bond's Mediterranean avatar. (The reality is less "tryst with James Bond" and more "screaming match with the driver" but anyway.) Seeing these pictures, I aspired to the notion of an effortless and seemingly unattainable beauty, and the lifestyle that beauty implied.  Effortless beauty, of course, is one of the Grand Myths mixed into young women's breakfast cereal, along with milk and guilt. Unattainable beauty, meanwhile, is an enormous commercial reality, the peddling of which brings in billions and billions of dollars a year around the world.  I wore a formal sari on one occasion and was surprised to note that unlike the saris of my personal myth, this sari had heft and weight.  The blouse kept gapping oddly, the pleats threatened to diverge.  I felt less like the lovely swan and more like the unfortunate cygnet.

When I wore a lighter and less formal sari to an event in South Delhi, people kept coming up to me and asking if I was one of the organizers.  Never one to decline a position of authority, I replied in the affirmative. My co-workers, meanwhile, displayed all the rapturous wonder of Americans hearing Armstrong's first words from the moon.  The attention I got for my sari is sad and perhaps instructive, because let's be honest - every ragpicker woman in this country manages to put on her sari in the morning and gets no thanks for it.  Meanwhile, the auto drivers kept calling me "didi," which is almost the female version of neta.  I can't pretend I didn't like it.

I could go on and tell you the stories of Delhi's many tailors, who in their spare time - and they have much of it - double as guardians of public morality.  One time, I copied a "daring" blouse pattern from one of my magazines and took it to a neighborhood tailor.  Used to the white pajama suits and high-necked blouses of this particular retirement community, he raised his eyebrows when I told him how low I wanted the scoop in the back.  When I arrived to pick up the garment, I found that he had tailored something entirely different - sort of like a T-shirt.  When called upon for explanation, he smiled gravely at my mother and replied, "our girls don't dress like that."

The "posh" tailors of South Delhi, meanwhile, are terrifyingly libertine. One afternoon, sandwiched between gold ruching and padded bra cups at Eve's, near my house, I had a tailor sketch me a pattern.  I picked it up and squinted.  In the end, I couldn't see any difference between wearing his design and wearing two halves of a coconut.  If I were effortlessly beautiful, I told myself then, I would have airily waved my hand and told him to go ahead with it.  But I was not - and at the end of the day, the goal of any flattering garment is to overwhelm nature with more intelligent design.

But the point my friend was making - and that can't be denied - is not about Indian-ness as a fun experiment to be engaged in once a year or even at the occasional society party.  He was talking about the reality of Indian-ness, and the ways in which, through sartorial bans, Indian-ness is sidelined or seen as somehow less, particularly in the working world.  And I can't pretend I disagree with him.  If, as a girl, the goal of my dressing was to reclaim and display Indian-ness as a source of pride (and it was) then the disparagement of an Indian ensemble is no laughing matter.  Nor is it a uniquely Indian phenomenon.  In the United States, ethnic-wear of any type is not seen as "professional" - regardless of tailoring or cleanliness.  Our preferences are so deeply ingrained that they are seen as unquestionable.  Just look at stories of women who are asked to leave their jobs because their natural hair is curly, or male business students who are told in college that in order to succeed, they have to mimic a slicked-back ideal.  I have a lovely and beautiful Jewish friend with wildly curly hair who would spend hours straightening it; she once confessed that it's because she just sees straight hair as "more professional."

Clean, tidy hair is professional.  But straight?  Why don't we just put a sign out front, "White Christians Only"?  There was great uproar over this a while back in the US, and several fashion magazines went out of their way to showcase women with natural hair.  But at the end of the day, things probably went back to what they were before - and there are a million more prejudices that we never question.

The moment we see a particular attire as more "professional," it's because we associate that attire with access to opportunity.  There is no denying that in India, Westernization is seen as that access.  And this perception holds true across all levels of society, from the young guy who signs up for an English class to get a better job to the rich woman who returns from abroad with an inexplicable and pointless foreign twang.  If we are being honest with ourselves - which, despite being Delhi-ites, we sometimes should be - these choices have little to do with comfort or familiarity.  There is a glamour, youth and edginess attributed to western clothes.  It is a matter of branding.  Much like sexual objectification, there are things that on an individual level may not be bad, but when elevated to a normative social standard (ie, practiced unthinkingly by many people in a particular demographic) can have harmful implications.

I remember an American friend who once told me that her office in DC included saris on its list of forbidden clothing, and the reason cited was that a bare midriff was immodest.  Which would be one thing, except that sleeveless tops and knee-length skirts showcase the exact same square acreage of skin. And even in a sari, a bare midriff is not a guarantee, merely one of many styling options.

At the end of the day, professional advancement has always been a game in which a privileged few attempt - as best they can - to exclude others, often for spurious reasons.  Saying an afro is unprofessional is the same thing as saying that women are too risk-averse for certain jobs.  I know plenty of women who, as a professional prerequisite, reject their own femininity - they have to choose between being "women" (whatever that means) and being "professionals."  I have felt this pressure myself - we associate womanhood with emotion, with sexiness, with maternal desire, with fluffy and un-mathematical thinking - with everything except for professional success.

The United States has evolved its prejudices over years, and to an extent is aware of them and attempts to provide legal redress (useless, in the main, but at least the option is there.)  It's sad that we in India are still in so much denial about mindlessly imbibing the prejudices of others.  (And before you start, I'll add that those who most vociferously protest the denial of Indian-ness are the same ones who would hesitate to wear Indian clothes to work, and then give all kinds of half-baked reasons as to why.)

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