One of the biggest issue these days is objectification of women. The children who grow up with watching women as objects pose huge threat to social health. Needless to say, the threat of own kids doing something embarrassing in the future is a nightmare. Irrespective of the level of professional success, they could always end up shaming themselves and the parents.
” It is not about how women dress. It is about how you bring up son!” the voices of activists’ and common people is growing. I was struggling to find right context to talk about respecting women. Unfortunately, most of the media is full of objectification and we leave kids to watch these all by themselves.
Honestly, I have no idea what kind of monster thoughts get injected into young minds.
Watching “Siya Ke Ram” was such a pleasant surprise and I finally got my moment to talk to my son. (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the makers of this serial). It is about great Indian epic ‘Ramayan‘ and is said to be narrated from the perspective of Sita.
As you probably know, Swayam Var was where the princess Sita would end up marrying the brave man who can lift and tie the bow – Shiva Dhanush.
As my son and I watched, Rama lifts and breaks the bow.
Then he justifies breaking the bow – “Swayam Var is about the lady choosing her man. Here, some of the gathered had reduced lady Sita to an object. This is not good”
My son asked ” What is objectification ?”. He was clear that objectifying women is something bad. But he did not understand it yet. I was quite happy that he understood something valuable.
We talked a lot of stereotyping and objectification. We talked about TV commercials, movies and whole bunch of things we watch everyday. How this causes us to think of a child as just girl, and nothing else.
“Yes Papa. My friend Lilly is a good painter! .. But in the advertisements, I see girls only as the ones who keep doing make ups and buy jewels”
We went on to talk many other things. But, most importantly, he understood that there is something called stereotyping and objectification and it is not good. At 7 years, he may not understand all the nuances of grown-ups and the issues. But got sound base at right age.
For me, that was a good start.
