Poor women in India have a man to thank for their low-cost menstrual supplies. Arunachalam Muruganantham risked his marriage and his family in order to revolutionize the production of maxi-pads so that they be made more affordable to poor women. In much of rural India, women were using rags, leaves or even newspapers as pads. Girls often miss school during their periods, or will drop out all together, because they’re unable to manage their menstruation.
Enter Muruganantham.
India and Pakistan haven’t exactly been the best of neighbors since, oh, the beginning of time. (Something to do with who claims ownership over the territory of Kashmir, which lies in the geographic middle of the two countries). The latest breach between the two? A Pakistani model claims that the Indian version of lad mag FHM doctored a photo of her to make it appear as though she were nude on the cover of its latest issue. Keep reading »
Unmarried boys, of course, are free to dial away as much as they please. Keep reading »
Something else to dislike about beauty pageants: they create expectations about what women from different cultures “should” look like. Spectators booed Kiwi model Jacinta Lal, 21, when she won the MissIndiaNZ pageant in Wellington, New Zealand, because she told the New Zealand Herald some “small-minded people” thought she wasn’t “Indian-looking enough to win the pageant.” But despite her blond hair and blue eyes, girlfriend is part Indian: Jacinta’s father is half-Fijian and half-Indian, while her mother is a white New Zealander. Thankfully, the pageant organizer has got Jacinta’s back and said it’s a shame pageant fans cannot accept her as just another lovely Kiwi/Indian girl. Keep reading »
Someone call Child Protective Services! Baby girl Sidhi Siddharth Sinune of Maharashtra, India, plays with a python that her father brought home after earning extra cash as a snake catcher. “I can’t buy her costly toys, but I can get her snakes to play with,’ he told the Daily Mail. Sorry, that’s a parenting FAIL. But, hey, if she’s not squeezed to death, some day she could have a nice purse. [The Daily Mail] Keep reading »
Vaseline has launched a Facebook app in India that allows users to lighten or whiten their skin tone in their profile photos. The app promotes Vaseline’s skin-lightening creams for men and feature Bollywood actor Shahid Kapur, whose face is spliced in two, half dark, half light. When downloading the app, Facebook says “Try the Vaseline Men Be Prepared Application for a fairer and spotless profile picture.”
Oh, if only this were about removing “spots.” Keep reading »
“You can’t blame the locals; they have never seen such women. Foreign tourists must maintain a certain degree of modesty in their clothing. Walking on the beaches half-naked is bound to titillate the senses.”
— Pamela Mascarhenas, deputy director of tourism of Goa in India, after the alleged sexual assault of a 9-year-old Russian girl there [Global Post] Keep reading »
A model balances a tricky load at Nida Mahmood’s runway show during India Fashion Week. [10/27/09, New Delhi] Keep reading »
The “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign began in India about two years ago and gives women the right to refuse a suitor unless he promises to furnish their future home with a toilet. It’s unfathomable here in the U.S. to think of a toilet as a bargaining chip, but consider that about 665 million people in India don’t have access to latrines. They have to squat in fields to do their business. And those who do have access to a community latrine are regularly under the gaze of prying eyes and suffer urinary tract infections and kidney and liver problems. A lack of proper sanitation in the fields and communal toilets also contributes to the spread of diarrhea, typhoid, and malaria. Keep reading »
The “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign began in India about two years ago and gives women the right to refuse a suitor unless he promises to furnish their future home with a toilet or latrine. It’s unfathomable here in the U.S. to think of a toilet as a bargaining chip, but consider that about 665 million people in India don’t have access to latrines — they have to squat in fields to do their business. And those that do have access to a community latrine are regularly under the gaze of prying eyes and suffer urinary tract infections and kidney and liver problems. A lack of proper sanitation in the fields and the communal toilets also contributes to the spread of diarrhea, typhoid, and malaria. As “No Toilet, No Bride” spreads across India’s rural areas, women are able to be more exclusive when choosing a potential husband because the practice of aborting female fetuses in favor of male ones has caused more eligible bachelors than potential brides. The women and their parents can, therefore, be more selective when making a match. But as more toilets are being built in India, one class of women are losing their jobs. Women in the untouchables caste, the lowest in India’s social order, often found jobs cleaning human waste by waste. Now, they’ll have to find other means of supporting themselves. [The Washington Post via Impact Lab] Keep reading »
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