I’ve always been one of those girls that scoured mainstream beauty/fashion mags to see if there was a desi face within the pages. Of course, I was constantly disappointed. While thumbing through Jane Magazine’s April issue (print edition only) this weekend, I surprisingly found two. These two women were profiled in a list of “30 under 30,” basically, 30 cool women under the age of 30…
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Miss Congeniality |
Kashish Chopra, 22 – Washington D.C. Real Estate Agent; openly gay; Miss Congeniality at the 2003 Miss India pageant. “People would tell me how they were born gay but didn’t know how to come to terms with their personal or cultural identity. But they shouldn’t be afraid of it, because they are not alone.” (p104)Alpana Singh, 29 – Chicago. Youngest female master sommelier in the country (and one of only 16 in the world). “It’s like, you can see Scarlett Johansson having wine, whereas Tara Reed is doing shots of tequila. Do you want to be Scarlett or Tara?” (p121)
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She Likes Her Wine |
It got me to thinking…just two? I know there’s more. Most of the people I come across in doing South Asian American work are dynamic women, all moving to break down barriers…Who would I additionally add if it was a list of “Desi Women Under 30”?
- M.I.A, 28, rapper. – I had to do it. You knew it was coming. She was the first woman I saw perform on a live late-night TV talk show. Does this SM mascot even need a bio update on this site? [link].
- Parminder Nagra, 30 actress. – Of the Bend it Like Beckham fame, as well as on E.R. “She was nominated for a 2006 Asian Excellence Award, in the category of Outstanding Female Television Performance, for her work in ER.”[link]
- Sunny Leone – 23 ‘actress.’ “…is the first performer of Indian descent (her parents were born in the Indian state of Punjab) to become a Vivid Girl.” NSFW [link]
- Rasika Mathur – 26, comedian. A brown lady that is shaking her butt on MTV in a not typical MTV-type way – on Nick Cannon’s improv show Wild ‘N Out. [link]
- Mohini Bhardwaj – 27, gymnast.Won a Silver Medal for the U.S. gymnastics team in the 2004, and was India Abroad’s Person of the Year in 2005. [link]
- Aliya Deri – 13, Spelling Bee Competitor. She came in second at Scripps’ 2005 National Spelling Bee. “Aliya plays violin, viola, and piano and is a member of two orchestras. Her other pastimes include Indian dance and Tai Chi.” [link]
All these women to me represent ‘Desi Women Firsts’ in so many ways. There are so many more women under the age of 30 that have done amazing things in their respective fields that I know I am leaving out (unintentionally), and many more I had thought of that were just beyond the ‘under 30’ bracket. These are just a handful of the women I’ve come across that are cool, young, and desi.Who would you list?
Sunny Leone – 23 ‘actress.’ “Â…is the first performer of Indian descent (her parents were born in the Indian state of Punjab) to become a Vivid Girl.”.
assimilation should only go so far! the body is a temple and stuff.
Do they have to be under 30? I nominate Jhumpa Lahiri, although I’m pretty sure she’s over 30.
What about the latest super-younger literary sensation, Kaavya Viswanathan? She’d barely written a sentence, and was still an undergrad at (wouldn’tcha know it) Harvard, when she was the subject of a furious bidding war and ended up with something along the lines of a half a mil advance for her first novel. The result, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life is pure chick lit, but got favorable reviews for being among the smartest in that genre.
Hmmmm….personally I am not sure that Sunny Leone is much of a role model – I think desi girls can do well and be independent without going to porn!
I think desi girls can do well and be independent without going to porn!
amen! (exclusion for lesbian porn of course)
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think bad of Sunny Leone for what she does – good luck to her, and I admire her doing what she wants with her body. But I think desi girls can be independent and successful and sassy without doing porn! Call me old fashioned because I know you are supposed to be blase about porn these days like it’s no big thing, but hey, I guess I am old fashioned then – I don’t really see taking your clothes off and having sex in front of a camera as a particularly great thing to hold up as a career or a role model for desi girls in America.
I dont agree with Amrita’s comments w.r.t Sunny. Its not that she went into porn industry for acceptance or to be different. She went and took the industry like a storm. Its about doing what she felt comfortable to do. Just a few hundred years back, devdasis were offered to temple who are later used by royalty and nobility as objects of porn. Those women didnt have a choice, whereas this woman did. I think thats what matters – the power to choose.
Prasad
Cool – but would you like it if your daughter went into porn? For me, that is my criteria for being a role model. And I would not like my daughter to go into porn. All the other women in the list are great – independent, successful, sexy, strong, doing something different from the norm. But if I wouldn’t want my daughter doing that kind of thing, I personally would not regard her as a role model for desi girls.
Parminder Nager
typo alert. Nagra.
When faced with that pointe blanc Q, I wouldnt know how to respond. If and when I have a daughter, I can only hope to instill confidence and independance in her so that when she becomes an adult she would choose what is right for her. If at that time, she finds Sunny as her role model, probably I will have to just suck up the reality and accept. Its not like we are going to show Sunny’s naked picture to a 12 yr old and tell her – ‘beti, look at her’, with glazed eyes. Likewise, you dont tell your 14 yr old kid that it is OK to be gay; if and when the shit hits the fan, we just need to be prepared to grab the umbrella 🙂
Personally, I dont see Sunny any different than Nandita Das (or any other actress who’d shed clothes in front camera or off camera for that matter) – since we are all aware of certain thing called casting couch.
a pedantic note, the term “role model” did not show up in taz’s original post. a point of shading, but i think important. people differ. i do not grant that being a porn actress would be something most individuals could handle very well, but, there is variation and some people might not have issues with it for whatever reason. it might be the right choice for sunny without being the right choice for our daughters or future daughters.
btw, on a slight OT note, the porn star taylor rain does not perform in interracial scenes because her father opposes it. when i first read that i was struck by the bizarro sensibility here: “sure honey, get DPed, but only by men of our race!” there is a wide range of morality under god’s heaven, though some more commmon than others.
There are tons of women who passed the 30 mark who blazed trails long before such lists came out….off the top of my head…
Bhairavi Desai (Taxiworkers Alliance in NYC) DJ Rekha (no introduction necessary) Sonal Shah (Indicorps and immense humanitarian work) The founders of Sakhi (established in 1989) The founders of Manavi (established in 1985) Geeta Citygirl (Salaam)
Is this the first time DPed has been used in verb form on Sepia Mutiny?
We’ve gone hazaar mainstream, yaar.
Not true Razib. She confessed on Howard Stern that she HAD without telling her father.
[disclaimer: I hate Stern. I learned this by watching 5 minutes of Stern’s T.V. show which happened to have Rain on it the one and only time I watched. She was fine. I’m not made of stone.]
Kavita Ramchandran, who created the cute animated kid’s short Happy Holi Maya.
She confessed on Howard Stern that she HAD without telling her father.
ok, i’ve heard that tale. my point was that it is a rather bizarre dad who is more concerned with the race of her sexual partners rather than the video-taping of the act 🙂
I remember reading an article a long time ago about sexual trauma and one of the things it mentioned was that very often porn stars only own up to being miserable about their work about 20 years after the fact. In their early years they talk about how in control of their lives they are and how great it’s going. It’s decades later that they begin to admit even to themselves how abused and powerless they actually felt the whole time. Of course not everybody would go through this syndrome but it seems very plausible.
Hey! MIA is British peeps, please find your own desi stars. She belongs to us 🙂
Wait a sec, so does Parminder. Ermm… so yeah – go find your own!
this is a great girlie post – thanks taz! 🙂
I found alpana singh really fascinating, being a bit of a wannabe wine aficionado myself…here’s a interesting interview with her where her boss “swears that of the four years he’s worked with her, he’s only seen her have to actually taste the wine five times to identify it”….wow! I can’t imagine having that sort of pallete!
Also Aliya Deri not Aliya Der.
And you might want to add this previous post link : http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/001669.html
Also doesn’t one of the links deserve a NSFW warning ?
are offices open on sunday? if you are working on sunday i’m assuming you have your own office….
I kinda wish they chose a better quote for Ms. Singh. The whole “tequila shots of tequila” phrase bothers me. I mean, would one to tequila shots of vodka? But this is just me picking nits. Kudos to both of them.
Is that directed at me ? If it is : yes, grad student offices are open all the time.
But of course I was prempting the complaints that are going to come in tomorrow morning.
They’re beautiful!
Amrita – Would you be proud if your daughter grew up to be a condoleeza rice ?
i say, r.t.a., u seems to be well versed in .. um. the porn industry
Awesome work Taz. Actually when I go through magazines I kind of hope to see a desi face in there too so it’s good to see that desi women are appearing more often in the media.
Expose,
thats hitting below the belt… now i wont be able to sleep.. .what if my future daughter one day tells me they are a republican, or worse, that they watch pat robertson and listen to that fat dude with the drugs problem who is parodied in the simpsons…
or worse, join the nra…
brrrrr..
Janeofalltrades (#13):
YES!
u seems to be well versed in .. um. the porn industry
i like precise facts 🙂 so i’ve done research. do you want me to give you a probability distribution of DPs in american porn? (the skewness is so strong in europorn that there’s no point).
[disclaimer: I hate Stern. I learned this by watching 5 minutes of Stern’s T.V. show which happened to have Rain on it the one and only time I watched. She was fine. I’m not made of stone.]
Abhi, you’re hilarious! 😀
2/30 isn’t a bad show. ..that’s what, 6, almost 7%? That’s not bad representation at all.
these girls are cool. good luck to them! I think desi girls can do well and be independent without going to porn!
amen! (exclusion for lesbian porn of course)
eewwwwwwww…..amen to the first half, but man….lesbians are cool but eewww ewwww eeewww to lesbian porn. eeeewww. gagggggggg…..ack ack…bleecccchhhh….
anyhoo…
I dont agree with Amrita’s comments w.r.t Sunny. Its not that she went into porn industry for acceptance or to be different. She went and took the industry like a storm. Its about doing what she felt comfortable to do. Just a few hundred years back, devdasis were offered to temple who are later used by royalty and nobility as objects of porn. Those women didnt have a choice, whereas this woman did. I think thats what matters – the power to choose.
and what cememts it to to choose to be an ego feeder, one who is willing to throw virtue to the wind, or to be a great star who isn’t juts showing off t, a and b to all willing to fancy a look.
anyhoo……is kiran ahluwalia under 30? she’s awesome…..
i had some former friends who try to tell me desi girls are the worst. i gotta disagree, by far.
anyhoo, that was my 2 cents.
Oops! Fixed it Sri- double checked the mag, she’s still cool. 😉
Razib’s right- I don’t drink. And if it were about role models, I wouldn’t pick someone that was a wine taster for a living. BUT, she is a cool chick because she is breaking down barriers and doing a “desi first.” Not about assimilation, but about doing something that has not been done before… and that is all I’m sayin’! 😉
This is a fun post Taz…my husband and I always watch brit movies with a lot of interest, trying to find a brown face here and there.
In terms of the list of women, ‘all moving to break down barriers’, it makes sense to include Sunny Leone in the list. Who are we to judge whether she is a role model or not? I mean, if that is what she wants to do and if being in porn rocks her boat (pun intended), then more power to her for doing what she wants!
I hope that every woman out there can find the strength and will to be true to herself. Amen to that..
Pattie – that’s quite the reaction! What do you find so offensive about lesbian porn in particular?
Just a few hundred years back, devdasis were offered to temple who are later used by royalty and nobility as objects of porn. Those women didnt have a choice, whereas this woman did. I think thats what matters – the power to choose.
Devadasi culture and history is my thesis supervisor’s area of speciality. According to what I’ve heard him say – they had a great deal of choice in choosing thier sexual partners and had much more agency than being mere “objects of porn”. Although it bugs me whenever brown women’s sexuality automatically gets linked to these imagined examples of the overly sensual exotic “ancient” desi woman, it’s this very image that a lot of female brown porn stars will play on because it sells so well. I’ve never heard of Sunny Leone but I have watched porn involving brown people (all of it somehow really embarassing or just plain offensive) and if you ever read the descriptive, it almost always incluedes the words “Kama Sutra” “secret” “exotic” “sex-slave” or some such reference of accessing the dark sensual sex secrets of the East. It makes me wonder about that question of “choice”. Let me join Pattie in saying
🙂
there is no such thing as brown porn.
Pattie – that’s quite the reaction! What do you find so offensive about lesbian porn in particular?
two women, doing the thing for all to see. if that’s their thing beind closed doors, bless them. fine…more power to em. but to make this something for depraved minds…that’s another. besides…this may come to a shock, but i ack all porn ( and i choose to stay as far away from it as possible….) . it’s an ego stroke for those who make it, and proves lack of imagination for those who watch it. it’s sick, disgusting, and shows how lame a person is to watch it.
Yeah razib – there is only sepiaporn 🙂 Someone should squat that domain name – may be a sister concern of SM, only more gainful :))
“Devadasi culture and history is my thesis supervisor’s area of speciality. According to what I’ve heard him say – they had a great deal of choice in choosing thier sexual partners and had much more agency than being mere “objects of porn”.”
BF – You should read my comments within the context of ‘initiation’ of girls into becoming a devdasi. IMO, thats a deplorable tradition, no matter how nobly/nicely/kindly those women were later treated. I dont want to sound like an expert on this matter, but they are more or less used as secondary source of entertainment for higher circles of society. Men with mid life crisis invented a nice way to keep the clock ticking – heck , them devdasis of yore must be porsches/v8 mustangs of today.
-P
pattie: if you’re referring to the women who star in porn, then you are sadly mistaken. many of them have backgrounds filled with abuse and dysfunction. you’re usually an unconditional fan of all things punjabi. perhaps if sunny leone was sikh? anyone know if she is?
Just finished my quota of Robert Heinlein and here I hear about porn. sigh
I think Sunny Leone is punjabi.
pattie: if you’re referring to the women who star in porn, then you are sadly mistaken. many of them have backgrounds filled with abuse and dysfunction. you’re usually an unconditional fan of all things punjabi. perhaps if sunny leone was sikh? anyone know if she is?
it wouldn’t matter if she was sikh, hindu, catholic, jewish, islam or anything else…..doesn’t matter where she comes from, it’s how she chooses to act. i know a singh who has chosen to involve himself with a person who has waisted her life, choosing as he put it to listen no one but the devil’. a girl who is a single mother at far too young an age, and shows her body off. alot of people have backgrounds of abuse and dysfunction…it’s no good excuse to enter such a business, especially as it also brings no better to one’s self. one can chose to make the better of a life that is not good, or they can screw their lives up worse. no matter who they are. hell, many people have their stories…even myself, and my darling one (who i can admit is head above me already, and i learn much from him) – we both have our stories – but it’s ego and the quench for attention that leads one to the porn industry. people who choose to fight dysfunction with more dysfunction are no better than the problem itself. those who deserve credit are those who try to make themselves a positive use to society, improving it, and not smearing it with more smut and egotism.
wow! thanks for posting. That makes me all warm and proud.
i like precise facts 🙂 so i’ve done research. do you want me to give you a probability distribution of DPs in american porn? (the skewness is so strong in europorn that there’s no point).
you want your porn?
here…..have
your porn….
I am very, very slowley seeing more and more brown faces in magazines outside of Asian Bride. Its still nothing to throw a party over, but its something. Here in Canadaland I’m heartened to see the desi faces in media, in news, etc…but fashion mads have been slow…unless its some trite exoticism fest fashion spread.
Kashish Chopra, 22 – Washington D.C. Real Estate Agent; openly gay; Miss Congeniality at the 2003 Miss India pageant. “People would tell me how they were born gay but didnÂ’t know how to come to terms with their personal or cultural identity. But they shouldnÂ’t be afraid of it, because they are not alone.” (p104)
cool. i’m not gay, obviously, but this girl deserves serious credit. she’s standing up for herself and others against archaic thinking, and to be honest, i know many gays who are better than us straight people in cations….so all power to her!
Ok, sorry for being so horribly off-topic, but I haven’t been able to get this out of my head since seeing the title of this post:
Girls – to do the dishes Girls – to clean up my room Girls – to do the laundry Girls – and in the bathroom Girls – that’s all I really want is girls Two at a time – I want girls With new wave hairdos – I want girls I ought to whip out my – girls, girls, girls, girls, girls!
Kitty Porn. With each passing day Mutiny becomes more and more bizarre 😀
i would have never thought parminder to be 30! she’s a great actress tho. and rasika is very cool. all right..i’ll give sunny leone a drop of credit…she’s still better than like pamela or anna nicole. not a whole lot better, but better. there.
Kitty Porn. With each passing day Mutiny becomes more and more bizarre 😀
lmao…i HAD to be the rebellious one! and i will not comment further on the face fuzz – billa similarities. unless provoked.