No word irritates me more than
the word ‘fashion’. This disease like the aids virus destroys the capacity of
individuals to think for themselves, it destroys their immunity to absurd
behaviour patterns and has the capacity to turn perfectly normal human beings
into jokers and brainless copycats.
The craze to be bracketed as
“fashionable” influences innumerable small and big decisions of our life – from
choosing the furniture of our house to selecting our marriage partner or even
the books we read or the tones and accent we use to talk to others.
Western societies take enormous
pride in the fact that they place the highest importance on individualism. As
per this ideology every person has the freedom to make free choices in every
domain of their lives. This emphasis on “freedom of choice” is assumed to make
them a superior species – a more highly evolved specimen of the human race on
earth. The westernized elite even in India have mesmerized themselves into
believing that once they imbibe “individualism” in a large enough dose, they
too become part of this superior species.
But very few people recognize
that the fashion industry which has made inroads into every domain of life is
systematically cutting at the roots of “freedom of choice”, “freedom of
thought”, “freedom of self expression”.
Take the example of clothes:
Despite the façade of free choice, in most western and now even westernized
sections of Asian and African countries, what people wear is not anymore a
matter of personal choice. It is largely pre-decided by the fashion industry.
It is a master stroke of the fashion industry
that women and men, old and young, as well as little children, whether from rich
or poor families – all sport denim with a sense of pride as if it is a
statement of having ‘arrived’ in life. At one time, it was the uniform of the
poor dock workers in America. But the fashion industry has made it a style statement
of the elite. Its absurdity can be gauged by the fact that torn, frayed and
patched jeans are more expensive than a new outfit! To my unfashionable eyes,
there can be no worse garment than a pair of jeans. They are not easy to wash
or dry if you don't have a washer/dryer set and people wear the same pair of dirty, sweaty and smelly garment with impunity
for days on end.
If it were destitute who were
wearing a jeans top that looks like a wretched rag or worn out banyan along
with torn jeans, one could overlook it as a circumstantial compulsion. But when
the sons and daughters of wealthy parents or filthy rich film stars go to
designer stores and buy the kind of raggedy outfits that one would feel ashamed
of giving even to a beggar on the street, one can only call it the perverse
magic of the fashion industry.
Even though it is fashion moguls
sitting in London, Paris and New York decide what is to be labeled the “in
thing” that particular season, people gleefully imagine they are making “free
choices” when buying clothes. In fact fashions change faster and more
erratically than Mother Nature’s largely predictable seasons. If they declare purple
to be the fashionable colour for that season, then one will find virtually
every single store displaying purple dresses that season. The appeal of fashionable purple doesn’t last beyond a few
months. It is a sure thing that in the coming season, another colour as
arbitrarily picked as the first one is declared the happening colour. And yet
all those women who wore purple outfits influenced by the status attached to it
in shop display windows would like to imagine that they went for that
particular dress out of free choice.
Likewise, very few women are left
with gumption to decide on the basis of personal preference or convenience
about how tight or how loose her garment will be. This is decided by a set of
fashion designers whose faces she has never seen and whose name she may not
have heard. It is only a rare woman who will use her own mind to decide for
herself how long or short her skirt or kurta will be, whether she will wear a
maxi or a mini. These decisions have been appropriated by the doyens of
fashion. Similarly, for ages, it was considered an embarrassment if a woman’s
undergarment peeped through her clothes or if her brassiere strap peeked
through her blouse. But today, it is considered trendy to show off your bra
even more aggressively as the outer garment.
On the one hand, mavens of
fashion based in distant London and New York decide how much flesh a woman
should expose, how much of her she is
going to reveal, whether she wears halter neck or full sleeves; on the other
hand even ordinary tailors are no less quick in persuading their clients to
copy the fashion trends from Bollywood movies and TV shows to adjust the length of kurtas and cuts of
blouses. But those who hypnotically copy the sharara of Aishwarya Rai or a mini
skirt worn by Kareena Kapoor don’t think there is any need to look at their
shape or the form of their own bodies in the mirror to judge honestly whether
what looks good on Aishwarya or Kareena will also look good on them. It is only
when a person assesses his or her own physique and picks out her clothes
accordingly, gives primacy to comfort and body fit, that the person can be said
to have made an individual choice. But fashion enslaved people lose such
judiciousness.
If it was just a matter of
wearing inappropriate clothes, one could ignore it as foolish behaviour. But
when women wear six inch long pencil heels which are proven to be harmful and
can cause permanent damage to one’
s feet, then you know
that the disease called fashion has the ability to impair rational thinking.
The matter is not limited to
external trappings. Today, men and women are spending lakhs
of rupees to change the colour of their hair, reshape and inflate their breasts
to firm up their bottoms or reduce their waistlines. In the process, they
inflict untold misery on their bodies- sometimes causing permanent damage. Ever
since fashion monarchs declared size zero as the desirable form for the female
body, millions of women have gone on crash diets at the cost of ruining their
health and undergoing self harming operations like liposuctions to refashion
their bodies into unrealistic forms and shapes.
But even more harmful are those who dare not step out of
their laxman rekha of intellectual fashions. On every social issue they
not only have pre set answers based on what is considered politically
fashionable at that time but also appropriate physical gestures to go with each
response. Because these intellectual fashions are manufactured in the
universities of North America and Europe and backed by the financial clout of
western donor agencies, therefore, even in India these fashions are remote
controlled from the West. All these NGOs and academics that strut around
mouthing fashionable jargon consider it a great intellectual achievement to shape
their views and research findings according to the political requirement of
their donors.
This is an important reason why
most of our NGOs indulge in export quality activism based on imported ideas.
Similarly most of the elite academics produce only export worthy treatises
which have very little worth at home. For instance, most of our “eminent”
social scientists don’t care to write books which can be read and used by
students in Meerut or Bhagalpur universities. They feel they have arrived only
when Harvard and Oxford recognize their books – never mind if few in India can
make sense of them.
Likewise our internationally
networked social activists don’t care one bit if their own neighbours or
relatives heed their prescriptions. They
are happy if they get applauded in conferences organized in Los Angeles, Berlin
or Melbourne. The day the elite sections of our society stop chasing fashions
unleashed in the West and instead learn to take decisions on the basis of the
ground reality in this country and the aspirations of the people of India, we
will acquire the capability of solving many of our big and small problems.
