Here’s a point-counterpoint exchange on that oldie-but-goodie, the Image of the Community:
“Your definition of ethical or moral may differ from my definition and from everyone else’s for that matter. It does take guts to do what these people have done and they are the new generation and the ideals they have are different from your generation, which luckily is passing on. I do not think by having this calendar out there, it will hurt our reputation as desis…”
“Please, please do not go there. The reason we Indians are held in high regard in America is because we are seen as law-abiding citizens, diligent professionals and model immigrants. Now if we develop and market trashy calendars and magazines, what will our image be in five years? It will be downhill from hereon.”
Those are two commenters on an interview of Saroosh Gull, publisher of DesiClub.com, by Arun Venugopal for the SAJA website. Now the last time we heard from DesiClub.com here at SM, it had to do with Paris Hilton, sorority jokes, and an Indian character called “Poo Poo,” so you can see what direction we’re headed in here.
Gull’s new product on the market is a bikini calendar of “Sexy South Asian Girls of 2007.” It came out last week and there are launch parties taking place in various cities for the next few weeks. (Here’s a sample of the advertising.) Something called Bibi Magazine is also involved, so perhaps we’re meant to understand that the bibi-saabs are giving their blessing, but you might have a different opinion when you see the product. Connoisseurs of the genre will also note the blend of representational approaches taken from white and black girlie pubs, although all the models but one are rather light skinned, surprise surprise. The text seems to follow the standard format with models listing their hobbies (which include “bubble baths,” “wearing stilettos,” “eating cupcakes,” “partying,” and “shopping, shopping and more shopping”) and aspirations (similar).
Anyway, here’s a bit of Arun’s interview with Saroosh Gull:
These women – how did you find them?
We found all of our models by doing a model search on our site, DesiClub.com, and by utilizing our relationships with key players in the South Asian-American scene. It wasn’t easy finding 12 Desi girls who wanted to pose in Bikinis, but we actually found 17, of which only 12 made it to the calendar.
Given that this is a desi calendar, you could’ve dressed your models in, say, salwar kameez. But you chose bikinis instead. Why?
I don’t think anyone wants to see South Asian models in salwar kameez, that’s been killed and killed again by the existing fashion outlets, who do nothing but the same thing over and over again. That was also part of the reason for doing what we did, to showcase South Asian women in a way that they have never been shown before. It puts a whole new perspective on South Asian-Americans being in the mainstream and not repeating the cliched Indian fashion look of saris and salwar kameez – not that there is anything wrong with that but we wanted to project an American look and that is what we accomplished.
Elsewhere, in the project’s press release, Gull says this:
..our main objective in producing this calendar was to showcase the beauty of South Asian women and to project an image to the mainstream market that South Asian women are just as “American,” being beautiful, attractive and capable in the mainstream fashion and modelling world as Latinas, Blacks, Whites and other Asians, if not more so. By advancing with this agenda, we are doing something that has never been done before, which makes this entire project and the impact it will have truly ground breaking.
So he’s actually raising the community’s image. You be the judge. Respectful comments only, please.
those desiclub calender girls look almost white. one even has blond hair.
I’m TOTALLY making becoming a “key player” in the South-Asian/American my new goal in life. You know, once I get a visa and all that.
Yes?
Sahej, it’s not about covering your butt – which can be done with any number of cute bikinis, it is about wearing underpants that come up past your waistline… I don’t care how old you are; that is not cute!
Neale, I think I would love it!
There is an article in this week’s Asian Pcific Post (Vancouver’s Asian newspaper) along these lines:
Bikini rebels take on Pakistan
Oh Manju, Manju… you’re growing on me, yaar
I know you’re from a generation that was scared shitless and left permanently scarred by feminism because it was taken over by white liberal ballbusters and bull dykes – and what I’m saying is not some bullshit my-generation-is-better-than-their-generation rant (seriously, I don’t hold with that “Second Wave vs. Third Wave” shite because it’s such a gross oversimplification). Feminism and conservativism are not mutually exclusive. Feminism doesn’t inherently exclude anything – not even patriarchy (OH YES I said it, and I can qualify it in ten million ways, masafaka!). Of course, lots of feminists would disagree 
It’s another terminology/meaning/historiography/methodology debate, and, as I’m sure you already know, those things can get really ugly.
I think someone should make one featuring indian guys and called it “their is a hati in my thong” and it will feature— you get the point. That small condom thing still bothers me!
The reasons this guy gives for making this calender are basically, “we want to make white guys have bonners” which is just dumb. Keep it real and just say “to get laid and paid”.
Who is going to buy this calender anyway? It’s not going to be in stores and I cant see any reason why someone would buy it. The only place I can see it sell is if it is marketed in India where this calender might pass for “erotic”.
.
Exactly…and I think there is a big difference between that boyfriend and a guy who just happened to be attracted to Japanese women. While there are some who might argue that someone who buys the calendar is just attracted to South Asian women, the act of buying a calendar devoted to an single ethnicity is so much more deliberate than the accident of being attracted to people of a certain physical appearance. (I also feel the need to clarify that my husband has never dated any other Indian women but me. )
I don’t give a shit what these people do. As long as the girls – dumb as they seem, or wanted to portray themselves for marketability – really wanted to do exactly what they ended up doing for this calendar, I’m not gonna trip. I just wish the girls in a calendar called “Sexy South Asian Girls of 2007″ didn’t all look like Latinas and tanned white girls. But vatewer, they’re still South Asian – only, the “right” kind
I need to make a “Sexy South Asian Girls” calendar of my own. I vill use real desi vimmen. So I guess my target audience will have to be desi lesbians…
They will laugh at this low rent Lowrider-esque shite in India. There’s a long line of well-produced erotic calendars. See Advani Oerlikon, above-mentioned Kingfisher etc.
Whenever I hear about women being exploited the implication is that said female is a victim in some way. I’m really on the fence about this issue. On the one hand, I don’t see the harm in it, there are tons of more vile ways to debase women and it could be said that the ladies that pose are making a choice and in control and through their feminine wiles they are able to obtain/exploit their own power, blah, blah, blah.
I have two friends that are exotic dancers/models and they both have art degrees (which were pretty useless to them for living off of) so they started to strip. They then could keep being artists and doing residencies and writing grants. One of these women makes and performs work that is very feminist and she has been accused of hypocrisy by other female artists. The other womans’ BFA is in dance and she has combined her “job” with her art to create a political burlesque show.
Their work is earnest and funny without all that ’90′s irony or heavy handed messages. Stripping enables them to be independant and to continue to be working artists/feminists. As my friend ‘Sierra’ said, ‘When I waitressed and bartended I was a treated like a sex object and a servant and worked harder for a lot less money. I feel more powerful now and get paid better. What’s wrong with that?’
A lot of women we know have been judgemental about it, claiming it contributes to negative images of women, encourages women to be viewed as objects, doesn’t advance the feminist cause, etc. and I think some of that stems from jealousy/insecurity since they talk a lotta shit on the gals that model/strip.
But I do also see their point. When I think of the girls I teach, I don’t hope for them to grow up and be strippers or calendar models because I personally feel we have a certain obligation to, not our families per se, but to contribute more meaningfully to the human family or the universe or something. Corny lessons I learned the hard way, I guess. Maybe though, in the process of being an object for a little while, she’s enabling herself to further her ‘other’ career as a student, artist or even being a mom long term.
desishiksa:
I disagree, but I refer you to Yeti for more thorough arguments on that point
I’ll just add: your saying that we shouldn’t he held accountable for being attracted to a certain kind of person is like saying we shouldn’t be held accountable for acting on our feelings. Of course we’re accountable for what we do! Whether it’s a good or bad thing is the question.
If you had said “there is a big difference between that boyfriend and a guy who just happened to be attracted to a Japanese women” you would make sense to me. That a guy just happend to be attracted to a Japanese [or a desi or a whatever other kind of] woman means that he’s attracted to a woman who happens to be of a certain race or ethnicity. That’s totally cool in my book, because it (presumably) means he’s attracted to the woman, not her race or ethnicity.
Being exclusively attracted to people from a certain race or ethnicity is a FETISH – and I think that is disgusting. I think it’s a bad thing to fetishize people for their race or ethnicity – especially women, given how easily they are already objectified, just for being women. (Of course, if you’re exclusively attracted to people from your own race or ethnicity, then you’re acting on the narcissist principle… or you have cultural issues).
IME when a person decides to date exclusively within a certain race (whether they choose to date only within their race or not), its because they have certain ideas about what a person of that race should look like and how he or she should act. This can be extremely discomforting if the person of “specified race” doesn’t want to have to measure up to someone’s preconceived notions of what it means to be a member of “specified race.”
I personally avoid men that will only date any single race of women… for a variety of reasons. I especially avoid men who only date black women since I don’t act or look like what most people think a black woman should look like.
People want to be loved for who they are… not only because they meet some race qualification.
“I can’t believe that this is even an issue, especially considering the ‘family-entertainment’ of Bollywood nowadays, which is increasingly approaching soft-porn…”
I thought the same thing, but I think it’s an expectation thing. Bollywood is expected to be meaningless, fluff and empty. And if there’s any socially acceptable forum to push the proverbial “envelope” it would be that one.
But when it comes to print, and calendar print, it could have a much different psychological effect attached to it. Plus, these women are not the superhuman, untouchable Aishwarya Rais and Priyanka Chopras of Bollywood actressland, they are nurses, veternarians, people in the real world with real jobs who chose to bare, not all, but more than one would expect. Should it be a big deal? Probably not, but my guess is the parents of those girls aren’t sitting back saying to themselves “Ah Bollywood has approached soft core porn so whats the big deal…”?
No, the guy dating Kurma’s Japanese friend has a fetish. You can’t help being attracted to people from a certain race or ethnicity if that attraction is based on physical appearance. I will always argue that you CANNOT choose who you are attracted to–it’s probably partly hardwired, and partly a result of the context in which you were raised. I’m not claiming that there is nothing political about who you fall in love with/have sex with, but sometimes you really can’t help it. It’s only a fetish if you intentionally seek out people from a certain ethnicity, surround yourself with the trappings of their culture, and actively avoid relationships with others. If you are, say, a desi woman who time and time again finds herself attracted to 6 foot tall blonde men, I don’t see how that is a fetish. And I think you are probably offending a lot of desis who are only attracted to other desis by calling them narcissistic or saying they have cultural issues.
Coach Diesel:
Just to prove I’m feminist friendly, I’d be happy to take your exotic dancer friends out on the town. We can even go Dutch.
Shruti:
I’m your man. Feminist am I. I like a wiiiide variety of women. No fetish for me, though I appreciate a good foot.
Oneup:
Do you make an exception for a man who dates his own race exclusively? BTW, I have a friend who’s really specific…he only dates overweight black women with Ivy League degrees. He’s got tons of ‘em.
And just to add…. all this “it’s just a way to relish the female form” bullsht is just that. BullSht. It’s a way to make money, just like everything else that uses female sex appeal to make money.
Camille, we are in agreement on the basic premise, underwear should end below the waistline. I just wanted to say the word “butts”. Such a piquant punglish/hinglish word
capitalism at work i suppose. if this is going to make real $$$ it has to be targeting non-browns too (ergo, the white-girl + tan look).
I agree with this. Show me someone who says they will not date fijian women living in Oregon under any circumstances, I’ll you can bet your booty that’s exactly who they end up with, having mixed Oregonian-Fijian kids and learning how to make coconut milk
Razib;
glad your here. please justify your blonde fetish.
glad your here. please justify your blonde fetish.
no mustaches.
re: attraction, there is some evidence that people are attracted to people who look something like their opposite sex parent. the best test would be the marriage/dating habits of biracial children.
glad your here. please justify your blonde fetish.
no mustaches
Damn. I guess that leaves me outta the running
Are you implying that I’m overweight?
Anyway, no I don’t make any exceptions. I prefer men who are attracted to women… period.
desishiksa, I find your argument on the fetish issue to be self-contradictory (and by “self-contradictory” I’m refering to your argument alone, and nothing about your personal life), but I’ve alredy said all I had to say about that.
As for this:
Please, the narcissist principle is simply seeing your own looks and experiences in someone else and being attracted to that. What on earth is wrong with finding yourself in someone else and loving it? Narcissism is NOT vanity or conceit, it’s just indulging in something related to yourself… like being addicted to Sepia Mutiny
And by “cultural issues” I was not pathologizing anyone or anything. I just meant that some people have boundaries (self-imposed or otherwise) because of cultural considerations – most of which I think are totally valid and/or understandable.
Homie, they have mustaches too. You just can’t see them because it matches the rest of their skin
Coach, have I ever told you how friggin’ adorable you are?
Besos!
(Ok, leaving for real now…)
Er, No. I guess you thought I was trying to set you up.
Just seemed hella odd to mention.
I was trying to show how specific (fetishistic) he is.
Boy, am I steamed about this calendar! There is not one single South Indian girl in the entire calendar. Were they in the “rejects” category? Well, until they include a semi-naked Southie woman in all her tacky, living-room soft porn glory, I will not be satisfied, no sir! Perhaps I should send Saroosh my headshots … hmmm …
[Joking aside, I agree with Shruti that the amount of super fair/blonde/light brown women in the magazine is ridiculous. They might as well have called it Miss Ambiguously Brown 2007 Calendar or something.]
. You just can’t see them because it matches the rest of their skin
that’s my point.
the ‘mustache zone’ is defined by a difference in hair & skin color. so far north and south it disappears.
though there are intergroup variance in hairiness.
Just to be clear, he ain’t dating her anymore. He’s moved on to other Japanese women
.
my main question is.. what do bikinis have to do with trying to make a point about how beautiful South Asian women are? why can’t you do that without the bikinis? it’s narrow-minded.
[ref to newly deleted comment erased for clarity. -intern]
When I looked at the calendar, I was surprised they couldn’t find any better bodies, but then I read Saroosh’s rhetoric and the bodies they chose make perfect sense if you’re interested in “mainstreaming Desi beauty” – provide the same package (poses, outfits, hair length, body type) with slight “Desi” flavoring. A calendar aimed mainly or solely at Desi male customers, I would speculate, would use models with (modern, not 70′s!) Bollywood body types.
I admire Saroosh’s valiant attempt at spin
Ok, I went back and reread the post and found something I had missed the first time – its subtlety being reason #930867957 for why I heart Siddhartha and his writing:
Wait, how’d you know about… oh.
It’s really funny that my tongue-in-cheek request last year for the “Sepia Mutiny Swimsuit Edition 2006″ has apparently been taken on board, and we now have not one but two links to calendars of various scantily-clad desi ladies. And some of them are even north of the Mason-Dixie Line of SMWorld’s perceived standards of politically-correct, “authentically-desi-looking” brownness/darkness. Not only are they South Asians posting in scandalously un-bahu-like poses, but they apparently “don’t look South Asian enough” either ! Oh, the horror ! The exotification ! The oppression ! The fetishization !
Anyway, I thought Red Snapper, Sahej and Manju’s posts in particular were hilarious. Great stuff, guys
Amitabh,
Welcome to the real world, my friend !
Anyway, I can’t speak for our cousins over in the US, but I’m sure your frequent visits to the UK must have made you aware that 2nd-Gen Brit desi women going off to various tropical locations on holiday with their girlfriends and posing around on the beach in skimpy bikinis is fairly common. In any case, the comments about UK/Canadian and indeed Indian music videos made some good points.
I will let the more badmaash commenters on SM respond to the second sentence there. I am doing my best to be more well-behaved these days, as you all know.
(Nimisha — I’m just kidding. I do know what you meant.)
On a more serious and totally academic note, I think that the Kingfisher pics were better in all aspects to the DesiClub calendar. Kingfisher’s calendars usually are excellent. Er…..according to anecdotes by friends, anyway. I’m far too scandalised by all the rampant exotification, objectification, and chromatofascism going on to be able to appreciate any of it.
Now if you don’t mind, I have to do some googling in order to hunt down that clip of Bipasha doing yoga on the beach which someone mentioned above. Shut up, I just want to do a more thorough analysis of that bikini she’s almost wearing. Stripes are the new black in 2007, y’know.
hey guys, this is a very good discussion here. I am really supportive of the project and everone here. I just finished posting my comments back to Jaya on the original thread of this post. I am going to paste it here as well. But before I do, just wanna chime in about the “lack of brown” models in the calendar that some of you are talking about. How many of you have actually seen the calendar and have held it in your hands? It is a true depiction of desi women, some are fair, some are dark, some are in between. The calendar is far more realistic than any bollywood movie. So if you want to criticize someone or something for depicting “too fair-skinned” desi women, then let’s talk about bollywood and its facade. anyway, here are my comments & enjoy:
Hi again Jaya, I can see that your view point is completely biased and your points of reference are unfounded with this calendar and the models showcased in it. Do you know why? Here is a list of credentials of each of the models who you seem to think are abused, starved and desperate:
Miss January, Kinal Bhatt runs her family business out of Tempe, AZ.
Miss February, Amena Deen is a student at New York’s Pace University and is doing Pre-Law.
Miss March, Ami Sheth is a practicing Doctor (Veterinarian) who has taken up modeling full time.
Miss April, Mariyah Moten is a spokesperson for Kohi-Noor Jewels and is a student, studying hotel management in Texas.
Miss May, Lena Jamon is a registered nurse (RN) in New York.
Miss June, Simran Deol is a professional career woman based out of NJ.
Miss July, Soni Kumar is a college student.
Miss August, Anjali Bhimani is an accomplished actress who was in the world famous “Bombay Dreams” and also on HBO’s “The Sopranos” and she is currently performing in several plays.
Miss September, Roshni Patel is studying to become a Nurse Anesthetist (C.R.N.A.).
Miss October, Alisha Haque is a financial advisor in New York.
Miss November, Mehak Bagai is a successful entrepreneur in the IT field based out of Texas and NY.
Miss December, Melissa Roy is a student at UCLA.
Based on all of the above facts Jaya, I think you should just give up this argument before you shoot yourself in the foot again.
All of this information is available if you go to the website for the calendar and if you purchase the calendar.
What you are doing is typical of ignorant people, who blindly criticize without giving anything a chance. It is quite embarrassing to read what you are saying, especially since you have not even looked at the actual calendar itself. You are stating everything based on your pre-dated view points and inconsequential, biased conclusions.
In short, before you criticize something, learn more about it. And this goes to the rest of you out there. I have been following this project from when they started shooting for it and the work Saroosh Gull and Ojas Vaidya have done here should be applauded for the courageous effort.
Apologies, that should have said “posing”. I have no idea what the lovely ladies of SM are doing while they post on this blog, or whether they are reclining at unusual and possibly salacious angles whilst doing so, or even if they are wearing various combinations of tasteful swimwear at the time.
I have no idea about such things, and for the record I do hope that all our female commenters are currently respectfully dressed in suitably traditional shalwaar-kameezes, with their hair tied into two plaits and a nice neat centre-parting.
I did comment about these folks having real jobs, but let’s not get carried away here and legitimize this “project” to more than what it is – capitalizing on the guaranteed existence of male sexual drive. Bonus points for any contraversy that would bubble up around it, instead of lambasting the ignorant and embarrasing comments you should be thanking them for the free publicity.
Applauded for courageous effort? Take it easy, you put a bunch of hot chicks with a very small skin tone variance on a calendar wearing enough to cover their nether regions… The Michigan militia does the same thing, so lets not hold our breath for the nobel prize committee phone call.
OK, looks like a lot of people are amazed at my naivety! I guess it’s just that I grew up with 2nd gen girls who would never pose like this. Maybe it’s just my own sheltered social background or something. Or maybe it’s generational…I’m in my 30s, but these girls are in their 20s, so possibly the dynamic is different. I always thought of 2nd gen American desis as being in two camps somehow…children of educated professionals (fairly conservative), and children of perhaps less educated but even MORE conservative Gujju/Punjabi working-class people. So I wouldn’t have necessarily expected either group to pose for a calendar like this. As for the crazy videos/songs/movies coming out of India these days, sometimes they surprise me too…although I’ve learned to expect anything from those quarters these days. The Kingfisher calendar (THANK YOU Mytake for posting that!) is not surprising because those are well-known models from the upper crust of India, which is known to be pretty liberal and relaxed in these things. Anyone who knows me well knows I have no problem with scantily clad women…and I don’t have a problem with this calendar either (even if I had a problem it wouldn’t make any difference, right?) It just seemed a little strange to me at first. But I enjoyed getting used to it.
I think Coach Diesel at #60 expresses the ambiguity of these issues very well. Her comment points us toward the economic aspect — the strategic use that some women have made of “objectification” to, in fact, empower themselves economically (and prehaps in other ways too) down the line. But the reservations in her last paragraph express a kind of queasiness with projects such as this calendar that I think a lot of people share. Queasiness, not objection per se, and certainly not censorship. But queasiness nonetheless.
There are at least two levels here. One is the level of agency. I am all for anyone doing whatever the hell they want, basically, as much as possible. And I’m curious about the economics of the calendar. How much $$$ are the models getting for their participation? How does that compare with the revenue Coach’s friends derive from exotic dancing? How much difference is there in degree of control and autonomy between the calendar models and Coach’s friends?
The other level is the level of representation. Forget about the individual models and their motivations, etc., consider the calendar as a product, a cultural intervention. What does it say about anything? What messages does it send? Frankly I think the whole debate about what it says about “us” — as in, desis in America — as characterized in the exchange that I quoted at the start of the post, is all pretty useless. For reasons many of y’all have clearly put forward in this comment thread. I’m more interested in how it participates in (and thereby intensifies) a generalization of the commodification of young women’s bodies underway in recent years.
Nothing says, “Hey, it’s Vaikunta Ekadasi” like a girl in high heels pulling off her bikini.
You know what I find so damn interesting about the commodification & women topic is that it is both liberating and binding. It may be obvious but it was a revelation for me.
Classic. Exactly the point I was trying to make when I said this :
“But when it comes to print, and calendar print, it could have a much different psychological effect attached to it.”
I think it’s more of a binary classification, when speaking in such general terms as “participation in a generalization of the commodification…” it either does or it doesn’t. This clearly does. If the makers are so proud that their models are vets, nurses, students, doctors, etc.. why not photograph them in those settings?
To promote their careers elevates the women into the makers fantasy that the South Asian-American woman can play both the good girl and bad girl role simultaneously. So the women are both socially accepted (a concern for the makers given SA’s socially conservative values) and have the attitude to don a bikini for all.
Cos vets, students and doctors aren’t sexy and don’t sell calendars. Nurses on the other hand…
Some of the reactions to this calendar are indicative of something I’ve been saying for years. Desis in the US and even the UK too are aeons behind their Indian cousins in terms of modernity and, ironically, Westernisation. India keeps moving on, Indians abroad do it much slower. It’s very rare for me to say this about anything involving hot women in bikinis, but this whole thing is supremely uninteresting.
Siddhartha, you’ve hit on one of the points that in my opinion can turn this into a very useful conversation. Coming from the viewpoint of a dude, there’s really only a few options when confronted with this topic. One is, to let women know how dudes take these kinds of images. Very few dudes look at these kinds of things as empowering.
If you put things in the converse, I don’t think too many guys would go for this kind of empowerment for themselves.
The NYTimes had an op-ed about this very topic this weekend btw. Not from the desi angle, but more generally.
…but maybe that is a generational thing, the generation coming of age now is different in terms of mores and this kind of thing is probably ho-hum for them
i absolutely LOVE how one of the sponsors of this cheap calendar is gotomedschool.com…located in fricking POLAND? huh..
adorable.