Activating youth in One Billion Rising
On February 27th 2017, Ashwini Syed and Devina Buckshee conducted a workshop in Pravin Gandhi college of Law on the themes of body shaming and sexual harassment as part of the One Billion Rising Movement #OBR for about 85 first year students.
Ashwini broached this difficult and uncomfortable subject by talking about her own experiences growing and as a teenager. This helped the students open up about their own experiences through an exercise where they wrote down one aspect about their physical selves they wished to change leading to a general discussion on school yard bullying, and how it carries into our college days and often chips away at our confidence. Thus the phrase ‘body shaming’ was introduced to specify the targeted appearance based bullying. Having a more specific term helped us all see how this was a real problem, beyond the mask of childish pranks and fun.
This was followed by another exercise where the students in teams had to creatively depict all the ways they have heard of body shaming. This activity really made them think about the power of the words they were using. A member from each group presented their work and spoke about weight based bullying, colourism and even the issue of sexual harassment cropped up in almost all the projects leading to a discussion around certain stigmas prevalent in our society.
Following this we saw a short clip on body shaming which depicted a young woman struggling with body confidence issues, only to be reminded by her friends and loved ones that everyone is perfect the way they are. We, then, spoke about the futility of body shaming, especially since we often can’t control our physical characteristics. The students spoke of society’s obsession with appearances, and together we realised that we have the power to subvert the conversation away from body shaming just by being more mindful towards our friends and peers.
Picking up from the student’s projects where a lot of the described body shaming was sexual in nature, we spoke about the specific gendered effects of body shaming and where it crosses over into sexual harassment. To explain this better we screened a short film which portrayed some of the daily sexual harassment faced by women in India at the end of which it offered a solution in self-defence and standing up for oneself and others. It showed how each of the women were previously hindered from undertaking normal tasks not only by the harassment but also by her family members, and only when she stood up for herself did things change. The film had a lot of interesting ideas and we discussed the everyday sexism that women often face. Some of the students also critiqued the film for its rather violent solution, and for placing the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the victims.
The discussion then moved on to that of bystander intervention and it was great to see a lot of boys in the audience speak up. They spoke of not being aware of the constant sexual harassment women struggle with and of wanting to stand up when they witness such behaviour. We discussed ways in which women and girls can call out for help in such situations as well to conclude the workshop.
