The Burden
South Asian women are still held to an artificially created expectation as demure, quiet, and silent. They are seen as a mythological deity and a 'model minority' who transcended beyond the ills of society to overcome its obstacles. The casual observer sees her perfect exterior and thinks she has it figured out, and wants her silence to signal as such.
Truthfully, she didn't overcome anything. She still has a lot to say. However, the Aunties sure make it seem like everything is perfect by wearing their latest and greatest outfits, jewelry, and make-up to shake-up at the parties to impress everyone. Every weekend.
Thus creating the perfect illusions of grandeur.
I also was expected to meet this artificial expectation. I was forced to be nice to strangers who were constantly shoved in my face a few days after I turned 15. They were referred to as my in-laws. People closest to me in my own family were abusive to me, and people in the Desi community were verbally vindictive, bad-mouthing and gossiping openly about mine and my Mother's divorce and personal distresses.
I was expected to hug them, be pleasant to them, smile at them when I didn't want to, and make artificial conversation with them at the usual Desi gatherings and dinner parties. Our voices are compressed, and this compression results in a need to please in order to survive, or eventually destroy -- one at the cost of personal mental health and the other of raw self-expression.
I once witnessed an online post where someone was bad-mouthing my Mother under her photo, and when I called them out on it, they yelled and belittled me instead. My Mother forced me to hug them when they came over for dinner at my Mother and Stepfather's home. This is how much South Asian women and children are victimized. To the point of lunacy, that verbal abusers are allowed into homes. Desi women already have to live with their abusers, but now they also invite the abusing diaspora into their homes. Rather this than risk losing any part of that South Asian identity away from the Subcontinent.
All this sure has made me pause a lot, sit back and wonder about the greater meaning of life and the behaviors of humans on this planet. (There is none, and people are irrational, and I personally take life and its challenges one week at a time).
This alternate reality has also caused me to gaslight myself constantly. I kick myself mentally if I feel like I'm not passing online as someone who is fitting that perfect "academic" profile, according to what someone thinks I should look like, or how I should behave, or what I should be saying. I feel like a constant outsider, and I don't belong and I will not be viewed as an experienced and reputable voice speaking out against child marriage and many other issues because I haven't fit that perfect box that someone else wants me to fit for their own self assurance.
I then tell that ghost to go away.
Add to this Bollywood movies made by men conditions its audiences to think South Asian girls are to be overpowered on their wedding night. No! That's called marital rape! These movies have been made for years that global audiences in South Asia and many other audiences in many other countries, including within many diaspora communities still watch. Now the conditioning is about Love Marriage vs. Arranged Marriage. The lead character is fighting for her right to marry whomever she wants, the sidekick throws in a comment like 'I want an arranged marriage.'
And it's being normalized on-screen and being conditioned into society's brains. That backwards rape-mentality feeds into our own South Asian family dynamics as forced marriage, and ultimately into new Western societal subcultures as 'normalized' arranged marriage, to the point the South Asian female is never to be heard from again.
She never had a choice since the beginning. Going against the norm would destroy her, so why speak up? Best to go along with what everyone says and keep the mouth shut. This also goes for men. They don't speak up on 'arranged marriages' and they resent the woman they get 'arranged' to. And the only way to take out the frustration of not having their way is to abuse and beat the woman they were "arranged" to get married to because speaking up would make the parents angry.
Any form of speaking up would make the families angry. So you see. There is no such thing as "choice" in arranged marriage.
What happens now when Western and South Asian society encounters a minority, brown, South Asian, female, who isn't afraid to speak her mind?
How dare she open our mouth.
How dare she speak her mind.
How dare she express herself.
How dare she use those words.
How dare she feel the right to exist.
How dare she feel equal to others.
What right does she have thinking we could express herself in a free society?
Society is used to women being silenced, and any words of out of a woman’s mouth that speak to her truth are automatically labeled as angry. It is time to stop the gaslighting of South Asian women.
It is said in South Asia when a girl is born, that a burden is placed on the parents, and they will need to figure out a way to marry her off as soon as she comes of age. When in reality, the true burden on a South Asian girl is society and her parents.
This is why it truly is a burden, to be a South Asian Desi Brown Woman.