This week’s edition of Time Magazine includes a cover story about the world’s next great economic superpower: India (via the News Tab). The cover features a worker from the industry that Americans are most familiar with. She is a representative from the ranks of those much abused call center workers. Similar to Manish’s fine entry, The Anatomy of a genre, I thought I’d take a shot at examing the nuances of this cover picture.
<
p>
The next time a call center worker calls me about signing up with the Dish Network, I am going to pay a lot more attention…and flirt a little.
What? No mangoes?
Oh, there are mangos alright, the magazine editor simply cropped them out of the photo 😉
that headset is fly.
Hey – have any of you ever seen a septum piercing like that in India? I’ve only seen them in the US.
Hey where are the other classic traits -The Namaste? -The marigold flower garland? -Mehndi?
From CNN.com’s article on Time’s cover story.
Groan…
These guys are so creative at times.
Newsflash.
Indians often fetishize the elephant, refer to India as an elephant (read first chapter of India Unbound by Gurcharan Das), and purchase those annoying little elephant knickknacks to decorate their homes. Indians have a habit of wearing bindis. Indians also happen to eat a lot – and, I mean, a bloody lot – of mangoes. Indians like mehndi and yeah, they tend to namaste, just like Americans shake hands.
So what’s with this hoity-toity, pretentious ‘oh but we’re just sooooo misunderstood – aren’t they just sooooo limited’ faux-angst? Reminds me of a bunch of whiny pretentious wannabe intellectuals.
Dont be such a Drama-Queen
I love the elephant part of it but the picture on the cover is just too cliche’ and oft beaten path. Time can do better than that.
Abhi, admirable attempt at filling Manish’s void.
I haven’t read the article yet, but the call center focus reminds me of the Discovery Channel documentary with Pulitze Prize devaluer Thomas Friedman. The Other Side of Outsourcing, if you haven’t seen it. It was unsettling for me, but nothing surprising for anyone here. It seems the Indian middle class is almost completely ignoring the “Other India”.
There are male call center workers too, particularly from Citibank.
Wonder what the male version of this cover would look like….(no more Shah Rukh or Salman Khan, please).
“Hey – have any of you ever seen a septum piercing like that in India? I’ve only seen them in the US.”
I saw an actress in a Hindi movie with that piercing, and I think a National Geographic picture, don’t remember from when though. Oh, and my cousin! She has one too, but I think she got it to make her parents mad 🙂
Did anyone read the complete article?
there just has to be a Mahesh Bhatt quote rite?
I guess the Auntie in the excerpt below from a past SM post on piercings had one like that in India:
Anna,
Only in deep rural India. Ennis is right – one would not see piercing even in semi-urban settings.
Maybe, an isolated somebody’s cousin in Cochin/ Mumbai/ Surat.
They’re very, very common in the villages. I’ve seen them a lot in Rajasthan, Himachal and U.P. I don’t generally travel anywhere else but I think they must be common elsewhere too. If you meant among the city folk, then no, I haven’t seen any.
I meant: one would not see septum piercing even……….
I have seen them on bharatnatyam dancers.
dude, I called the Cicatrix resemblence at 10 this morning. Stealing my lines (grumble grumble grumble) 😉
At least Mrs. Rushdie wasn’t tricked out like that on the Newsweek cover on March 6th.
she reminds me of my former self- the bharatnatyam dancer. i used to HATE wearing that septum jewelry piece. and the head piece. and the necklace piece….oh, eff it, i might as well come clean– i hated all of the costume jewelry.
although, on to another tanget, i must say, TIME did do a fascinating job of capturing a beautiful, south indian lady. is it a real model? seriously, who cares what the article is about, let’s dissect this magazine cover, shall we? 😉
You can tell they planned this a few weeks ago, and were waiting for a slow-ish news week. The Sensex has been tanking lately, and there’s been a fair amount of grumbling about rising fuel costs…
At least they didn’t call Padma Lakshmi or Aishwariya Rai to pose for the picture!
DesiDancer did – I can testify to it 😉
Does she work at a call center; or is she a call girl. That is what I do not get – why choose a beautiful Desi girl, accessorized to the hilt – she looks like she is going to a wedding. why not use the picture of some fat, overweight sadhu, graciously blurring his private parts. I do not kno but I really do not like it,why? Because the call centers are in India because it is cheap to do busines there, and then you associate that idea – like pavlov, with my cousin on the way to her wedding, as soon as she gets off work. What message does that send to the masses, of people not exposed to India – who may have lots of redneck preconceptions. So you pray to that disney character right? The pavlovian association that I feel that is made here is again – some form of minor propaganda (or a slightly more benign word that I can not think of). Opal – I truly feel is just another instance of this same shit. Why? Becaues Opal Mehta does not exist, and what does it preach – this is how you get into Harvard girls. In my view some publisher jumped at the opportunity to do this – to create this character. ANd the author – having obviously not lived that lifestyle had to get some insight into what that kind of life is. Hence the plagiarizing which she may not have consciuosly realized was what she was doing. Third example, is this episode of some special on outsourcing where they so gingerly go into the apartment of two indian girls and ask about dating, where one Indian girl admits to having sex before marriage. What does that have to do with outsourcing? What does that have to do with outsourcing. I am not so sure I want that angle, portrayed, having many girl cousins who I absolutely adore, who all had arranged marriages. anyone see what I am getting at?
Pankaj;
I have no idea what you are actually trying to say, but I don’t see how that girl on the cover brings to mind a call girl or prostitute. She does represent a cliche and exoticized version of an Indian woman, but then again that’s about the only type that exists in the Western media (including the work of diaspora filmmakers like Gurinder Chadha). Why didn’t they put a Sadhu on there? I don’t know, but it would have been fitting. Or else a 90 pound tamilian with alfalfa hair, a dilbert shirt and a pocket protector. Because we all know that while all Indian women either look like Aishwarya Rai, Padma Lakshmi or this girl, all Indian men are emotionally stunted, emasculated nerds. I’m so glad that the U.S. mainstream press has finally revealed us for what we are to the rest of the world.
highlarious! good snarking 🙂
Also in Time this week, Rahul Mahajan’s heroin overdoese.
Post 23: Hello? How do you see this photo as an assault on Indian female honour? That seems to be, in an admittedly twisted and rambling way, to be your point. Just cause the girl looks good? Not a lot of covers sport ugly people these days. Or are you simply spouting the age-old Indian prejudice that all working girls are ‘working girls’?? If that’s the case, you need to join this century.
Outsourcing and the erosion of traditional Indian mores are related, in many ways. For more info, see the Thomas Friedman/Discovery Channel piece, as suggested by Shruti. It is deeply unsettling.
With this cover India has jumped the shark
Amardeep,
Don’t be badmouthing Rahul Mahajan, he already ODed and is in deep shit.
I was in India when all this was happening week ago.
Man, 24/ 7 new channels on TV tore him apart even his spin doctors (like former PM, uncle, Apollo hopital doctors, etc.) tried their best.
Dharma Queen:
Mangoes to eat? Oh.
Yeah, I just bought three ripe ones and they’re sitting in my fridge. And I’m second gen.
Just call me a self-exoticizer.
Drama Queen – That is not what I am getting at, I just do not understand in coming up with a cover why they chose to do that – Why not put a headset on the taj mahal?
Pankaj, cause that’s the American (maybe just human) way – put a pretty girl on the cover and the magazine will sell. Were you maybe speaking in metaphorical terms when you wondered if she were a call girl? (ie is India selling herself for filthy lucre)
Drama Queen – I did not mean to say that she was actually a call girl. but call center – pretty girl, hence call girl. Just trying to say – that why is there a need to put a pretty indian girl on the cover of time if we are talking about India’s economy, it evokes stereotype – the new symbol of India – Opal Mehta’s cousin. It just does not sit right with me. If it was about the US. and an Indian periodical used a georgeous california blonde in a bikini with stars and stripes – would that be appropriate? To me – I don’t think so.
awww…at least you guys get the Silicon Valley jobs though…while we’re stuck answering calls from angry housewives in the midwest, cooking your food and raising your overachieving spelling-bee kids.
i agree. sometimes it’s valid as in manish’s brilliant postcolonial analysis of book covers. but looking for stereotypes in ‘time’? that’s kind of like looking for the ‘elephant’ (sorry just had to include that loverly image in too) in the room.
and putting hot girls on magazine covers? really? who woulda thought. i’m glad it’s that coy chica on the cover instead of the sideburned, glasses-wearing coconut-oiled hair stereotype of the indian nerd girl (yes boys, we have an ug stereotype too).
Pankaj,
I see where you are coming from, but is the Indian girl’s appearance really as belittling as a bikini? It’s ceremonial, traditional dress. She doesn’t look undignified to me.
I think there is a habit on the part of editors/illustrators who want to portray a certain country as ‘friendly’, ‘approachable’, ‘trustworthy’ etc. to choose feminine emblems. Nineteenth century French and English cartoonists invariably portrayed France and England as beautiful, motherly, robust women, while Germany was portrayed as a very masculine monster. Women are seen as ambassadors. I don’t think this cover is any more than an appeal to that psychology. A man tends to appear more threatening – or just more boring.
I’m fairly certain most periodicals would put Britney Spears on their covers rather than a bearded Amish guy for a story about the US (regardless of its relevance to the story)…
Pankaj
.
she looks like she is going to her own wedding. Go to someone else’s wedding like that, the bride will bitch-slap you for upstaging her.
She be hotness….who is she? A model? Bollywood/Mollywood/Kollywood starlet? Beautiful eyes like that : methinks she’s gotta be a Tamilian/Bengali/Mallu.
I am sorry – it just does not sit right with me, it is – to me not embematic of what the article is about. People all over the country, in places like bumblefuck idaho – have now seen some indian girl and are exposed to some Idea of India – that is what it does, like I said before it links India to the girl on the cover. Now uncle jed in bumblefuck has just got a glimpse of India. She is not what India is about, India – I hope, I pray is still about enough modesty, where putting a girl like that on the cover is shocking to well, people like me. I just don’t like people who have Ideas about race that are not up to speed picking up a Time magazine and letting their minds make whatever association it may. Outsourcing has a connotation of being “cheap”, if you link that concept to the girl on the cover it gives uncle jed a sense of empowerment over that idea of an indian girl, o.k. – so now you are “cheap” -or better yet “cost effective”. I do not want anyone coming to some conclusion that my cousins are “cost effective”
So you are worried some guy named Jed in Idaho may draw a negative opinion about India/Indians based on a magazine cover ? I doubt Time magazine has a big circulation in Idaho, so you can rest easy.
The picture is misleading coz the face of Indian IT is a nerd. But who will buy the face of a nerd on the covers
Maybe uncle Jed in Bumblefuck will actually read the words on the cover (if he can read; if he can’t, then why worry about him) and link the girl to the ‘world’s biggest democracy’ and the ‘world’s next great economic superpower’.
I guess that a regular reader of Time magazine (even Mr. Jed from Idaho) will be well informed about India. There have been a lot of articles in the last few years. Don’t worry Pankaj.
My younger brother lives in Idaho. I will ask him to start polling people.
Not necessarily, if this picture’s caption is to be believed…
Oh yeah, with people like Kavya Vishwanathan, Gurinder Chadha trying to outdo the westerners in reinforcing stereotypes, who needs Indiana Jones- The temple of doom
I believe that I am on the money here – I really do, but bear with me because – to be frank I am getting over some shit that might make me a little “militant”. But There are a lot of people with negative – backwards ideas towards race and foreigners. And for these people to link – psychologically – India to the woman on the cover gives them a sense of empowerment. Race and Power – that is what that game is about. And when there is something foreign to an audience, there is fear, with fear there is a loss of power. So the tendency in a person with that sort of psychology is to take a view of india as being there to handle their “laundry” whatever is outsourced. And then they link this idea of a pretty indian girl with that idea of outsourcers doing their laundry. Do you think that Time would ever put a cover of a pretty Israeli girl on the cover if there was an article about Israel. How about Thailand?
I know an elephant represents various aspects of India in certain ways. I have those annoying carved marble little elephants sitting around somehwere in some box. I just don’t like naming economies after a certain animal that ‘represents’ said country. Tiger, Drago, Elephant…whats up with naming these economies after animals? I can see how people use the analogy for aggressive (Tiger/Dragons) or size (elephant), but can’t these writers just call it a good/strong economy than giving it some animal name? I guess its a pet peeve.
Some day when different economies keep coming up, they’ll run out of animal names.
Lets make some other analogies:
Russia – Bear Egypt – Nile Crocodile (or the Sphinx) Brazil – Anaconda Australia – Tazmanian Devil (with the cartoon of course) Canada – A Moose? Russians took the Bear. Botswana – Hippo (from the Okavango, Indians took the Elephant) South Africa – Great White Shark Some middle eastern country – A camel. Mongolia – Wild Horse The Republic Congo – Gorilla Democratic Republic of Congo – Gorilla (conflict among Congos for who gets called the Gorilla). Norway – Reindeer And more…
I am really interested in knowing how FOBs react to such articles. From what i read, it is less strongly (if at all) than the ABDs. WHY????? I think that is the real post i am waiting for.