On a pedestal is a woman placed and into a deity made – just like Durga with her larger than life persona, the epitome of ultimate feminine power and her innumerable stories of patience, wrath, grace, fortitude, humility and penance.
Mythic is what womanhood has been made into; emblematic and therefore fictitious! The how’s, whys and when are not the right questions to be asked or pondered about, rather the bankrupting of autonomy, the actual taking away of power through roles made cumbersome. Certainly, it is not the task, effort or ‘labor’ that is in question; but the ‘duty’, the obligation termed a woman’s prerogative that is the predicament one and all face, experience and live.
In the movie, Night Bitch, Amy Adams named only as Mother has an epiphany, demystifying motherhood. She says: “Do you ever feel like the big secret is that we are gods? We fucking create life. We make life. We are so powerful. I bet men are terrified of us. I mean, look at you. You are this miraculous goddess growing bones as we speak.”
The protagonist is only recognized by the viewer as Mother. A role displayed as primeval, and natural; connecting with the animal kingdom and therefore primitive; yet transforming it into something mythic and godlike. Again, is that where the problem begins? Creators eventually metamorphosed into demi-gods? Battling it out with Gorgon-like conundrums and hindrances: from the predestined care responsibilities, personifying Barbie and Mary – Mother of Jesus – persona to the imposter syndrome, self-questioning and doubt.
In her participatory documentary, She: Who Lives, for the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, up and coming filmmaker Ayesha Farooq explores the idea of motherhood, its trajectory and the journey, filmed mostly on a train. She converses with a diverse set of women migrating, embarking on a journey from their homeland with their families. The documentary focuses on the impact of migration, starting and raising a family. The filmmaker navigates through different reflections on the various roles that make the whole – the mother. The documentary – inadvertently or perhaps otherwise – exemplifies what we as women probably not recognize and that is the massive migration we ourselves undertake – the girl into a woman! It is more than a journey… a train ride with different stops. A migration that takes in substance, matter and patriarchal paraphernalia from every halt along the way. And yet, the self-doubt, all the questioning is as consistent as it is cumbersome!
Fallibility, vulnerability, rawness, why label them as imperfections? What is perfection anyway, the ability to make one and all feel less than perfect… flawless? Is that not where the problem lies? The vicious wheel to remain maliciously unbroken! Setting standards and rules that are meant to restrain, eat away and drain.
“Do men feel the same way as we do?” was a question recently asked? Perhaps and possibly, women are wired differently – but that is the easy answer or maybe the hegemonic social construct is such that tweaks this very wiring for control, influence and most of all sovereignty. Women deliberately set on a voyage in pursuit of perfection, exhaustive, exhausting – consuming one and all!
“Do men feel the same way as we do?” Why compare apples to oranges? Or perhaps it is time to put all the eggs (let’s just forget about the apples and oranges analogy altogether to initiate the undoing and unraveling of hegemony) in one basket – white, brown, big, small, organic and what have you. Easier said than done, certainly – but it can begin with us. Only by creating and reiterating the narrative that fallibility, vulnerability, rawness as true values and exemplifying perfection as a curse; can the wheel be broken. High time to do away with the mythic, the emblematic and therefore the fictitious!
