The Indian Television Industry survives on the basic formula that a woman is a woman’s biggest enemy. They ensure that the more the mother-in-law torments the daughter in law or vice a versa, or the more the cruel minded the vamp is, the more they can en cash on their TRP. I am also a part of different mom communities on Facebook, wherein many women open up about their problems in life.
Even there I have observed, that most of the times, a woman would have problem with another women, either with mother-in-law, mother, sister-in-law, co-sister or a neighbour, friend or a boss, who is also a woman. In rare cases, even if someone complaints or talks about their grievance with respect to their husband, there would be another woman behind husband’s behaviour.
The age old saying goes, A woman is a woman’s biggest enemy, and to a certain extent instead of trying to change the same, we have somehow accepted it to be a norm of our society and conveniently, made the women a Vamp, who only knows how to destroy a household.
For a change, I would like to beg to differ from this age old statement. One thing that I realized during my observation of these various post, was that somewhere down the line, the woman, who was portrayed as a vamp was perhaps the victim. May be she was suppressed all her life, by patriarchy and the society and that is the reason, she is removing her frustration on the next generation.
May be deep inside the heart a mother in law may want to allow her daughter in law to work but superficially she may be restricting her because she did not get this opportunity for herself or was restrained giving the same reasons? May be as women, we are taught since childhood, that it is important to feed the ego of the society, instead of understanding the emotions of another woman? May be these women, were treated in the same way by their in-laws and the society and therefore they feel that this is how women have to be treated, an unwritten law was somewhere written by the society, in the process.
I do not believe, that a woman is a woman’s biggest enemy. It is high time that we as a new generation take the initiative to change this mindset. Instead of cribbing about why somebody is restraining us or interfering us, try to understand their situation and the background from which they come from. Probably, our generation may not be able to change this mindset, but at least we can give a better environment for our daughters and daughter in laws in future.
I remember the old serial Dekh Bhai Dekh, wherein the Dewan Family, had one mother- in- law, and two daughter-in-laws, all women were working, had their own career and yet lived happily with the entire family. Yes, every family has their ups and downs in life, that does not mean that we portray only the downs in life. Sometimes, I feel the serials in the 90’s were more progressive and in literal sense empowered women, they had their own career and were also able to balance family.
In today’s serials if you see, then even if a girl remotely wants to have a career or a profession of her own, she will be taunted and harassed by another women in her family, society. Any woman with a career must have a negative side to her, as per the daily soap opera.
Most of the fights between women in reality are created because of these serials. These serials always show, that one woman has to be jealous of another woman’s sucess. It shows that women should never support women. It teaches the women, that only the women who are docile and listen to her in-laws are good, if women especially the younger generation have an opinion, then they must be bad and such women should not exist in our society. These serials promote the notion that Culture and Tradition means clipping a woman’s wings. If she is happy, then she has to be a vamp.
Even today, if a husband supports a wife, he is mocked by the society. By society I mean Women folk.
The intention of this article is to make women aware that we are Angels in the lives of another women and not a vamp as the society has labelled us. Yes, we can help and support each other achieve our dreams. We can talk about our aspirations, work towards it without feeling guilty about the same.
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