Anecdotes and Realizations

 Now, it's been a while since I wrote a long array of blogs. No judgey. But, writing brings back good thoughts. Writing brings back that feeling of relief knowing that someone somewhere could read what I have to say, if they would just search for 'Anjali Paruvu Opinions'. Isn't that on your search history? Anyhoo, I wanted to put into words what makes me want to articulate the flying mess of consonants and vowels into blogs with short, simple sentences. All my life, I have had thoughts (big shocker, Anjali!). Wacky ones, funny ones, mean ones, sad ones, and a lot of question ones. These question ones were questions I thought no one cares about. Or if they had thought it, they would have thought it was unimportant and left it alone, right? How could I have a question no one thought of? I'm no genius.  But, the more questions I left unasked, the more thoughts I leftunspoken, the more injustices I didn't protest, the worse I felt. And it never even clicked for me. ...

 Recently the 70th Miss Universe beauty pageant took place, and the world went ga-ga as Harnaaz Sandhu from India was crowned winner. She has quite an inspiring story. Her mother , having fought patriarchy, became a successful gynaceologist . Sandhu stands for womens' rights and menstrual hygiene. This is truly inspirational and she would be a wonderful role model. Except for the fact that the only reason I know about her is because she participated in a  pageant that stands for an archaic system of ranking and comparing women that should not exist today.  Beauty pageants in general are  horrifyingly degrading and outmoded in ideologies. A group of women stand around in minimal clothing, awaiting judgement from a panel of people, rating their bodies, their chest sizes, their waists and deciding who the 'most beautiful' girl in the universe is. How can this still be a thing? And a popular thing, at that? One can argue that nowadays pageants give more importance to the...

 Menstruation. Someting that all the women in the world go through every 20-30 days but still is not really talked about. Is that not shocking! That almost half of the world goes through this, but still so many people refuse to talk about it.  Period talk is much more open now than the early days, but it still makes a lot of people awkward. Boys especially, are kept in the dark, and I can only imagine their reaction when they are finally told. 'You all bleed? Monthly? What? Why didn't anyone tell me??' That is a great question. Why is it a taboo? It happens literally all the time. To everyone. It is one of the most normal things ever. But still we are caught in whispers, hiding sanitary napkins and not explaining why we don't want to swim today.  Things like this, seem harmless, but put feminism back a few steps. Why should women be ashamed of their bodies? Their bodily functions. They should be open about their struggles, their questions. But many young girls, are not ...