Yes, the World.

same pinch – losing our stories

Many years ago I heard Nelly Furtado‘s song ‘Powerless‘ and the following words struck me

 
She talks of a notion of beauty that she must comply with while being a star. And no, she doesn’t complain about having to paint her toes, but instead about having to do away with a part of her identity.

My sister and I were watching the 1994 beauty pageant where Aishwarya and Sushmita went head to head and I couldn’t help but notice the striking Jesse Randhawa, who was ‘Jasmeet’ then and decidedly punjabi in her ways.

 
I don’t know Jasmeet/Jesse and can’t comment on her and how things changed for her over time, but it did strike me then that all these lovely ladies at the time had a look that was quite unlike the other. I don’t know if it was the way they wore their hair, their accents or their skin tone. But there was a je ne sais quoi that set them apart from each other and gave them a story of their own.

A story, either of their roots or of the struggle or simply of the kind of exposure they’d had in life. The sway of Aishwarya’s hips talked of her already successful modeling career.

There was something that made them them.

A recent 90s-pop-love moment got me watching videos of Shweta Shetty , Suneeta Rao, Anaida, Mehnaz. Not one was like the other. I don’t know them personally, but they did have a look that certainly didn’t make them seem like they came off an assembly line.

I don’t mean for this to be a comment on the state of beauty today and how we’re all chasing the same ideal. (which we are by the way)

Instead, I wonder how much we’ve lost in terms of our ethnicity and our stories by straightening our hair and wearing it French. Or shaping our noses and losing our Kashmiriness? I don’t know.

Consider the young girls that Tehelka wrote about, who’re erasing their skin of marks and scars, almost erasing their stories too.

True, celebrating our differences is easier said than done.

The world’s a global village with startlingly low patience for differences. And we may not want to cling to our roots all the time, but there’s something sad about having them wiped out altogether for the sake of beauty and the subsequent likeability .

For all our talk about individuality, sadly we’re more alike now than we ever were.

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why generalizations piss people off

Generalizations help us make sense of an otherwise complex world.

Dealing with different people and recalibrating how to communicate with them, work with them, talk to them, can be exhausting. It’s just far simpler to make a bucket in your head and dunk people according to religion, place of origin, sex etc.

It’s just easier to make sense of the madness by staying organized in our heads and fitting people into little boxes that we comprehend. Like the 25yr old go-getter man from tier II cities who aspires to be cool and own the latest in mobile gadetry, or the 17 yr old girl from Allahabad who has worldly aspirations and her air-hostessing is going to get her all she wants. We’ve all made these boxes in our heads.

And so we generalize. More for our sanity and inability to comprehend large amounts of seemingly incoherent data that we receive daily from the people we encounter.

But why does it piss people off?

Contrary to what people say, I don’t believe generalizations piss people off because they’re not true for them. In fact we feed off of the generalizations that agree with what we believe is our identity.

It’s not generalizations that we hate. We use them to our advantage. We wear them as a badge of honour when they coincide with who we think we are. We fuel these generalizations when it suits us. The DLSR around your neck makes you part of the creative lot. We like that.

In that sense it becomes an issue of identity. So while I’d like to be known as an MBA because I would want to associate with some of the generalizations made about them (successful, achievers etc) I’d not want to be associated with the generalizations about MBAs that don’t suit me.

So we take what we like and get upset at what we don’t. It’s only natural.

But, I believe that the real reason people take offence to generalizations is because it shows  an utter unwillingness on the part of the generalizer to try and get to know the generalizee.

We get pissed off when we find that people aren’t bothering with getting to know us and instead are happy to place us in a ready-made box.

Placing someone in a box, even if ever-so-gently, is a way of telling them that you already know whatever’s worth knowing about them.

We get pissed off because not bothering to get to know us is the only way someone can make us feel insignificant. And we’d all like some validation.

And yes, this is a generalization.

this explains a lot of the melodrama that is my life

Sartre’s beliefs explained in ‘Introducing Sartre – a graphic guide’

facebook’s made aunties out of you

I remember being a terrified 15yr old who couldn’t wait to get away from the neighbourhood aunty whose only purpose in life (or so it seemed), was to ask me which college I was planning on going to. At the time I remember marveling at her cheek. As if planning to get into a college was all it took. I remember feeling stressed about my exam results not because I cared about which college would have me (I never ended up doing engg anyway) but because of what that aunty would say.

Cut to 2011 and the aunty hasn’t met me in over 8 yrs but it’s as if magically her spirit seems to have split 400 different ways and turned into my Facebook contacts. Suddenly I didn’t just have to answer to the aunty. Now I had to answer to the 400 people who I don’t even remember anymore, demanding I go to South Africa for a holiday because switzerland was made uncool by Yash Raj.

We were answerable to that aunty when we were kids, and we’re answerable now to our ‘friends’ who sit around the world staring at their phones/computers and judging us for what we do and don’t do.

While we may have escaped forced morality by breaking away from our extended family, we seem to have gladly acquired a new set of friend-like facebook profiles whose sole purpose in life is to praise us for our sexiness (yes, that’s about that new pouting FB profile picture you put up) or to judge us for not having had that phoren holiday or not putting up pictures of those colourful shots that are so crucial to down for an FB album.

These aunties forced us to compete. And these FB friends are doing that now.

And not unconsciously, mind you. Very willingly. licking-their-lips-waala consciously. Pushing others into an imagined life of un-happening-ness.

Did you enjoy the feeling of staring at the mountain top in Leh as much as you enjoyed the envious ‘Likes’ from your fellow friends?

Are you living your life to please your facebook aunties. Or are you living it because it makes sense to you?

Just asking.

say no to guinness

I know I’ve grown up on Guinness books which left me amazed at that women with a 13 inch waist and that Indian (always Indian) man with the longest moustache. Good times those.

But then somewhere along the way I got to see other ‘amazing’ things. The jackass’ on MTV, Kim Kardashian’s crazy family, America’s funniest videos and of course the coke and mentos guys. I’m sorry to say but it deadened my sense of awe. The longest, biggest, fattest, thinnest, tallest didn’t hold my attention.Not only did things have to be the ____estest, they also had to be interesting. More interesting than that bespectacled young man lip syncing the hell out of every song I couldn’t figure out the lyrics to.

So if this is what my world is like, why in the world would brands go all out and thump their chests, raid their coffers, spruce up their PR machinery for a measly Guinness World Record?

Why brands do it

- Their PR agency tells them it’s a sure-shot way to get media attention.

And this they go on to eventually prove in the form of PR valuation excel sheets that invariably will tell you that you got millions worth of free publicity. It’s fascinating how so much money exists on paper. and only on paper

In effect, the record is for the media junta. Who couldn’t be bothered.

- Their head office is in the US.

Trust me on this. Most brands attempting Guinness records in India for PRgiri are headquartered in the US. These brands would love to do cool interesting work but their HOs won’t trust them. And Guinness becomes this 3^rd party translator between the HO and the Indian guys. The HO thinks ‘Diwali, Anna Hazare. I don’t know what that is. But Guinness. Yes that’s something I understand’. Please go ahead.

- They give you a plaque (oooohh!!)

It’s proof that you did something. You are the fastest growing market for the brand. You have been showing amazing growth. But all you did was TV. And God knows these know-it-all experts are pushing you to ‘push the boundaries’ on marketing. So you give the Guinness thing a go. After all, Guinness gives you a plaque to hang on your wall. And we all love shiny new things (oh wait it’s a paper certificate!)

- It’s legit

It makes your marketing activity legit. If Guinness says you’re cool, then you must be…. not!

Why the Guinness Record makes no sense

• People don’t really care unless you’re doing something cool and fun. No, thousands of men holding a mug of water and attempting to shave is not cool.
• You’re paying the PR company, the events company, the media company (for that oh-so-important 360 *buzz*). That’s one expensive plaque.
• You can do way cooler and impactful stuff with a camera-phone and youtube
• Who is your TG? And do they really care about this record you’re creating?

So before you reach out for that Guinness World record, answer this. Why do you really want to do it? We all know it’s for that case study you so wanna send out to your US team for that all-important pat on the back.

Company ka maal, darya mein daal?

This is not to say that it won’t work for some brands. But it really isn’t a one-size-fits-all. Also, this is an exaggeration. Else it wouldn’t be fun!