Women in India have been suffering by men gazing at them which make women feel discomfort, nauseous and mentally unbalanced for their lustful expression. Encouraging women these Women’s Day, Vitamin Stree made a powerful video stating the universal rites of cat-calls, pitiless act performed by men.
According to Indian Express, if woman is verbally or sexually harassed, assaulted or ‘accidentally’ felt up it’s not the mistake of the perpetrator but the mistake of the woman and what she wears.
The primary question which is asked to the woman “What were you wearing?” is stapled to her every time.
Whenever the assault is too cruel and cold-blooded people do protests on the streets but the video but the video takes a dig at the laconic nature of public outrage as well:
“Collective outrage unites us like nothing else” but “outrage wears thin with age” which explains it brings the country together but only momentarily, after some time everybody forgets about the incident and the country becomes increasingly worse than how it was before.
The video shows how women are harassed, “ay item,” “wolf whistles,” “Madam, humein bhi try kalo.
Here’s the whole poem by Gaya:
I’ve been wearing men’s gazes
for so long now
that mere wolf whistles
no longer pierce my calm.
My ears dont tingle
and my cheeks dont burn
in fact I don’t even have the urge
to turn and say,
when one of them shouts
how he would like to
fuck me
as if.
I do admit,
that sometimes skin on skin,
the brush of thigh or hip or tit,
worries me,
because I’ve grown so numb
to fingers on my body
my lover calls me frigid.
I laugh them off,
these stray hands at taxi stands and
“accidental” jolts in buses and trains
that make for a very good story
which I tell well
especially since collective outrage
unites us like nothing else;
even though I am not outraged
because outrage wears thin with age
and mine disintegrated years ago
There’s always someone though,
who asks,
but what were you wearing?
The same thing, I want to answer,
that I have worn for so long now,
it has become my skin
Your Gaze.