Shear madness!

A couple of weeks ago, I had a problem recognising someone I knew quite well. I’ve known this lady over some years but suddenly when I ran into her in unfamiliar surroundings it all went embarrassingly blank for a little while.

Was it some kind of face recognition problem that I had or something else? I later put it down to the fact that she was probably not wearing any make up. Do women look drastically different with and without make up? I would venture to say yes.

I am not sure if this might be a complimentary statement but I suppose through the centuries make up was something that was always used by the opposite sex to look attractive. There is nothing wrong with that I suppose, but I would like to highlight a recent incident where I saw a totally new trend in women’s fashion.

Just last week, I was at the Barefoot Gallery and on that warm December evening, I saw something absolutely stunning happening. Beautiful young women, some from the higher rungs of the corporate world, were getting their heads shaved. Yes, right down to the skin and it was not because of the hot weather but in support of a cause, which was called ‘Shear Madness’.

In the Bible’s Book of Corinthians there’s a verse that says ‘….but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her…’ and like make up, long hair on a woman is one of the identifying characteristics we associate with the gender.

But these five women who decided to chop off their hair like men were making a statement against gender violence. A worthy cause, but did it make a huge impact? Probably not. One could put that down to badly-managed PR; a sprinkle of media people were there and this story would likely be printed in the English newspapers, which mostly cater to the upper crust of our society.

However, at the bottom of this exercise lies a gnawing problem, which needs to be investigated and dealt with on a larger scale than the ‘Shear Madness’ program, which was just a far cry in the wilderness. Gender violence, protecting the girl child, date rape, and the hundreds of other phrases we have come up with these days to create awareness have some deeper root causes.

In the media we see more and more crimes against women and children reported. Some would like to say that we see more of these reports in the newspapers because the media has become more sensitised to it, while others may look at real statistics and say that there is an alarming trend developing and something needs to be done now.

In my view, I believe that this subject is handled more from a defensive stance rather than from the opposite side where women are told how to react towards issues rather than how to actually try and prevent them from happening.

A lot of our society’s problems stem from the changing values at a family level. One-parent households are becoming a common factor, as much as both parents having busy jobs with not much time for children preventing them from learning any values in life and at times leaving them open to all kinds of danger. This speaks so much of the girl child and how we should protect her.

There are several programs that address the issue, but then again it is a question of recognising ‘what is a good touch and what is a bad touch’. In that sense, these programs are well and good, but none of these really drive home to the root of the problem.

In this day and age, what do we tell a girl when she attains puberty? We know what the old formula was. The girl would be locked up in a room for over a week, fed some vile tasting stuff, and on an appointed day considered auspicious brought out into the world like a new person. That gives her a sense of the change that has happened.

Friends, relatives and neighbours are called for a get together, which indirectly informs them that the girl is now different and has to be treated differently; in turn giving the girl too an idea that there is a behavioural change from that of child to young woman that is expected of her. But today, especially in the city, all of these customs are brushed aside and puberty is treated as a mere inconvenient physical factor and life goes on.

From then onwards, the commercial world takes over and the girl/woman’s life is controlled by what type of sanitary napkins she uses to what type of lingerie she wears. Our entire value system is governed by this commercialism and we no longer depend on the traditions of our culture that has been there for years. But in contrast all what a woman needs is designed on a drawing board or strategy that is far away in the West.

But just take a look at the other side of the coin. While all our concentration is on women, have we thought of what we tell young boys when they reach puberty? From a marketing point of view, the first thing that would be targeted at the growing young man is his facial hair, what blade he should use to shave, and what the best shaving cream or lotions are to achieve the desired look. But do we talk to them of mutual respect, how one should treat the so-called weaker sex?

There is a serious need for us to be looking at our value system, and if this sounds clichéd, I am sorry about that. However, if we get our fundamentals right, we probably won’t have to be looking at this problem on such a mass scale. And for that matter, pretty young girls would not find the need to go around bald-headed to make a point to society.





(The writer, a PR consultant and head of Media360, was previously a mainstream journalist in print and electronic media. He also edits a new media website.)