Sexuality
Editorial: Beauty and Sexuality
Beauty gleams in unexpected places, but its effulgence turns to tawdry glitter when it is shaped and squeezed into form-fitting frames. Rigid ideas of what is beautiful or desirable can reinforce oppressive structures. However, when these concepts are more flexible they can be subversive as well.
By TARSHI
October 15, 2018
Bleached Girls: India and its Love for Light Skin
Bleaching syndrome is not a superficial fashion, it’s a strategy of assimilating a superior identity that reflects a deep-set belief that fair skin is better, more powerful, prettier. And it’s not limited to India; skin bleaching is also common in the rest of Asia and in Africa.
By Curated Content
October 15, 2018
Review: Lihaaf
A woman can be more than something that just exists in a marital home, a woman can be more than just a beautiful body used as a mere decoration in the household. Isn’t it high time we talked about the problems of the terminology used to define beauty and the association of it with sexuality if Chughtai tried doing this in 1941?
By Grishma Trivedi
October 15, 2018
Too Beautiful to be Faithful
“It’s fascinating Yasmina, but also scary how sex or sexualising something can be ignited from our need for beauty that probably stirs positive emotions that we consider beautiful, such as feeling pleasure. But you know as well, desiring what we think is beautiful can generate fluidity: I can never know what I am exactly. All I know is that I was with men, and I was with women, and all of them tickled something within me. “
By Abdullah Erikat
October 15, 2018
Shamed and Sidelined For Too Long, Plus-Size Women in Pakistan Are Now Speaking Up
“I realised plus-size acceptance is neither a movement to eat whatever you want nor is it about placing restrictions,” Amina said. “It’s about being kind to your body and realising you are not defined by the size of your waist.”
By Curated Content
Beauty Dictated; Beauty Discovered
Should we train it to think well, all these minds would see reason in similar things and they would come up with the same absolute reality – a universal Truth. That Truth would be a reflection of the Natural order for all humankind. That Truth alone would be beautiful.
By Shweta Krishnan
October 1, 2018
My Complicated Love Story
Today I do not know whether I want to grow out my hair or keep it short; I am just trying to breathe and be in the moment. To enjoy the journey rather than worrying, and waiting for the destination!
By Ipsita
October 1, 2018
Acne and Attraction: An Unspoken Affair
The last few years have been a struggle in accepting myself with the possibility of always having acne and believing that I am still beautiful, even on the “outside”. This journey of believing that I can be worthy of love, attraction, expression and desire regardless of my looks continues to be liberating and empowering.
By Lamia Bagasrawala
October 1, 2018
Editorial: Performance and Sexuality
We are many selves. Or rather, like a series of Russian Matryoshka dolls nested one within the other, we perform…
By TARSHI
September 17, 2018
Outlander: A Review
Time and time again, Galbaldon asks us, through the character of Claire, to remember that we are travelers, we move and are moved by the interactions and environments around us.
By Dana Burton
September 17, 2018
‘Don’t They Realise We are Human?’: The Uneasy Alliance Between Fashion and Feminism
“Historically, feminism and fashion have been pitted against one another,” writes Manjima Bhattacharjya in her book, Mannequin. It’s a dilemma the fashion industry has struggled with for decades – being perceived as flippant, or existing in a vacuum”
By Curated Content
Issue in Focus: Performance and Sexuality
To think of sexuality as performative disrupts the need for stable categories and identities, instead suggesting that we all reinforce and disrupt normative formations as we attempt to inhabit the world in messy ways.
By Sneha Krishnan
September 4, 2018
Prescriptions of Proper
In a world of prescriptions of performance and perfection, there isn’t truly that much space built in to risk non-performance, not being perfect, or to risk not fitting the prescription.
By Shikha Aleya
September 4, 2018
Video Page: Baby Steps
In the short film, Baby Steps, a seemingly mundane Skype conversation between a mother and son turns into something more.
By Curated Content
September 4, 2018
I’m a Fennel for Now
“I’m afraid because I bring to bed more than just one soul of a scared conflicted boy. I’m bringing to bed a whole army that not only runs the streets within me but also spills out over my body and the body of the boy next to me.”
By Abdullah Erikat
September 4, 2018