This is going to be the sloppiest, most rushed entry I’ve ever posted, but that’s because I’m so excited about what I just saw, I want to get the information to you sooner vs. later. I can edit after I publish, damnit.
There’s a show we have received several tips about– “The Lot”. We keep hearing about it because it has a desi contestant named Shalini Kantayya:
ON THE LOT, executive-produced by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg, will give aspiring filmmakers from around the world the chance to earn a $1-million development deal at DreamWorks.
Premiering on May 22 and airing twice a week throughout the summer on FOX, this reality-competition series features a cast of undiscovered filmmakers who will compete to win the support of the show’s viewers, as their fate will be decided by a weekly audience vote…
Every week, the hopeful filmmakers will produce short films from a chosen genre, running the gamut from comedies to thrillers, dramas to romance, action to horror. They’ll have access to the best resources the industry has to offer — professional writers, cast and crew, and maybe even Hollywood celebrities. [link]
I usually don’t get home until about now, so I knew I wouldn’t get to watch it and that’s why I promptly forgot about it– until tonight, when I was channel-surfing because I’m sick and on the couch. Once I heard that of the 15 finalists, five would be featured tonight, I stuck around to see if the brown girl would be in the ring…and she was.
Despite being high on codeine and everything else in my virus-wracked system, I sat up for the first time all day because THIS GIRL IS TALENTED. No wonder they plucked her out of a pool of 12,000 applicants from all over the world.
I’m not typing that because she’s brown– she had the BEST FILM OF THE NIGHT and Michael Bay, the guest judge who directed “Transformers”, agrees with me.
Here’s the thing: there’s but a wee two-hour window in which to vote for true awesomeness (dial 1-88-Thelot-05 or click the next link to show your love online). You can vote as many times as you’d like (handy “Vote” button is highlighted in yellow) AND you can view Shalini’s 3-minute clip yourselves– I think once you do, you’ll be cheering her on as effusively as I am, though you won’t sound like a frog while doing it.
It was up there, don’t remember the exact figure, but they’re from Radnor/Conshohocken – to live in those areas its like a requirement to wipe your ass with $20’s
agree with this, and I’ll say it’s discounted not because they feel the inherent work is ‘useless’ rather it’s discounted because it doesn’t yield high income.
That’s not necessarily true. Most women in the 20s and 30s now make as much money as men of the same age, so the women’s careers are discounted, it can’t be because of income. I mean, I’ve seen desi aunties and uncles take the “she’s just working for fun” approach, even when the she in question is a physician…where there is at least potential for high income.
A desi filmmaker with a love for HHTDL, hip-hop and non-profits? Plus she reps Brooklyn? (Lick shots!) I think I’m in love…
I think somewhere along with Sonia. Hell I’ve worked since I was 17 but getting married and children is a whole other ballgame. I hate to say it but single people love to theorize in anger about how things are in society and how they should be but when you actually start living that life it’s a whole other ballgame. Theories are good on paper and sometimes during arguments on the web but at the end of the day I don’t know a single working mom who wouldn’t love to stay at home and take care of her kids, nor do I know a single guy who’s pulling in decent income who’d want his wife to sit at home and raise the kids. We have so much cultural baggage we make a lot of assumptions about how things are and how they should be and personally for me I’ve had to eat a lot of my own words about theories I had about relationships.
I find the “sugardaddy” notion super irritating. If I was disabled tomorrow I’d make a decent living of Social Security. I’ve worked hard and contributed a lot of money to the government to earn that. I have no qualms about staying at home and contributing to my home and family if my husband was making enough money to cover my salary. The aunty world made a lot of (positive) comments about my fiance who is a doctor but hello people forget that I inherited the boy’s loans too. I had none! Things aren’t as black and white as we always wish them to be.
Camille mentioned the discounting in the same context I had:
That is, pursuit of more interesting, but less lucrative work. If she (and you) are saying the work is discounted simply because it comes from a person owning a vagina, then it still doesn’t conflict with my point of males having more pressure to stay away from that type of work.
Look I understand women face discrimination in the workplace, and societal pressure to rear-children, etc.. but none of that contravenes my central point.
I disagree–I know working moms who do it by choice, because they want to work, even thought they could afford to stay home, and stay at home moms who do it because they can’t afford daycare on two salaries, but would like to go back to work when they can.
And they can afford to stay at home because someone else is covering they ass. While the discussion of working vs. stay at home is an interesting one, the original point was “working for money vs working for ‘passion'”
So while this chick Shalini seems to be doing well, I hope she’s at least aware that society’s clamps weren’t as tight on her as they would be on a guy.
HMF, what, exactly, is the logic of this statement? is it that women are to not put enough emphasis on their careers because they can expect that just at around the time they should start earning a salary, they will find a nice, wealthy man who will marry them and save them from work? not a single one of my girlfriends has ever counted on a man in terms of money. the same goes for my female law school classmates. i am almost 30, and choosing law has greatly to do with the fact that i do not, nor want to, have the luxury of relying on a man for my financial well-being. and my parents – with 2 daughters and a son – are concerned about our careers equally in terms of financial stability. this is so amongst almost all the desi parents i know.
also, i specifically do not want to rely on a man’s money or skills because i have seen personally what it does to the balance amongst partners – even my mother would agree that not gettng a college degree or starting a career of her own had a drastic impact on her relationship with my father.
Society’s clamps are only as tight as you allow them to be. If you conform to society that is your choice. Sure there may be pressure from parents and family but part of being an adult is making difficult choices.
I don’t think it’s as one-sided as you make it seem. Men claim they would love to have a sugar momma, but the minute you bring on a women as or more successful then they are, they can’t deal with it.
Umm, did you bother to read any of the follow up messages? It’s that in the desi community in particular, women do not have the kind of pressures men have to work soulless, empty, boring jobs that pay well., Sure, they can if they want to, and if they do, they’ll face gender biases in the workplace etc.. etc.. but there’s a leeeway of choice (and maybe that’s connected to a general ‘discounting’ of women’s work in general) associated with what a woman can do, women are not raised in most desi households with the underlying message of, “go to school, work hard, get a good job and never leave it, because you’ll need a stable job, once you get married”
Read #70
Please. If we’re going to acknowledge the power of society’s clamps on female behavior and choices, then it applies the same for males. We’re all human. I understand the need for men to resist conformity, all im saying is in this particular instance our power of resistance must be greater
Thank you for proving my point, you’ve equated success = sugar. But it’s not your fault, it’s what you’ve been conditioned to do.
All I want is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.
i guess this is really where we differ, because i would say the exact opposite.
rahul – i think you don’t have to do too much to prove that. but money does save you from certain worries – does that make you slightly happy?
I don’t blame you, the guy’s a hack – The Island, Armageddon, Pearl Habor, etc.
No comment on Shalini, didn’t see the clip yet.
Huh?!? You’d say that desi culture teaches women they will grow up to become familial breadwinners, that they should focus their energies on earning stable incomes, irrespective of what their personal ambitions are? Does this bizarro-desi culture also have a history of male foeticide and “eve-teasing”?
That should be adam-teasing, no?
when we were talking about society, i thought we meant desi society in the states – and yes, i would say that desi parents generally push their kids to become financially stable in their careers (desi parents’ mentality – not mine – generally equates money with success), regardless of gender. most aunties i know work full-time, many in lucrative jobs, so they obviously wouldn’t teach their daughters differently. and while the desi parents all complain about their kids not getting married, or having kids, nobody expresses a desire that they must do this at the expense of their careers.
in india, i agree the situation is different, but even now it is changing, particularly in larger cities like bomay and delhi. some women may take breaks, but it doesn’t seem to completely derail their careers.
I caught it right after I clicked submit..
That’s not the question I asked.
It’s a profoundly unrealistic and outlying view if you honestly believe desi culture in the states (which is not much different than desi culture in India, as most parents grew up in India) places men and women on equal footing when it comes to expected earning power. (Mind you, that may be what’s actually occurring, but it doesn’t correlate with expectation)
If you honestly believe your average desi parents will say to a woman in her mid to late 20s, “no no, don’t get married yet, wait until you have a stable job” or ” no no don’t getmarried , wait until you get that promotion, otherwise your school and time spent will be a waste” you’re surely living in some bizarro world I’ve never heard about. I’d be interested to see if anyone else can corroborate this point of view, or at least elucidate it.
I meant discounted both culturally and financially because we have vaginas 🙂 Even high income earning women, on average, make much less than their male counterparts. And of course it’s generally worse for women of color. I don’t know if anyone breaks wage gap studies down to the desi level, but that would be interesting as well. Additionally, I think work done in the home is incredibly discounted as well. Hellloooo “hidden economy.” That is another topic, though.
I guess my point is not so much that women have it easier or anything like that, but I do see a bit of HMF’s rationale for fewer social constraints in the desi community for women. We’re not all given an equal playing field to succeed in our pursuits, but because desi women’s work is so often labeled as a “cute pastime” we’re also allowed a little more leeway in our cuteness. That said, it is annoying as all hell, and the assumption that you’re going to get married so someone else will provide for you is also frustrating. Again, maybe it’s generational, but this “leeway” is confining in other ways.
Rahul, I’ll queue you up after HMF for the sugar mama train 😉
On a somewhat related topic, I read an article recently that talked about the lack of diversity in the nonprofit sector – low pay seemed to be the key factor driving out men and minority groups. Except in high-paying executive positions, which still have a glass ceiling, people working in nonprofits tend to be overwhelmingly female. Of course it was a survey, not empirical study, but one reason was that women were more often able to rely on another person’s income to supplement theirs. Yes, there could also be consideration that women are more likely to choose social services, but that theory loses some credibility when you see that the higher-paying leadership positions are still majority male.
but if their sons and daughters in roughly similar amounts go into highly lucrative positions – ibanking, law, medicine – of course they expect their children to command equal earning potential. within these fields, the desi people i know are roughly equal in terms of their gender composition. and desi parents here push their sons and daughters equally to choose financially lucrative fields. i know one uncle who prides himself on the fact that his daughter makes more as a lawyer than i do, and that his daughter makes more than his friend’s son who is also a doctor.
for the record, i am in my late twenties, and my parents told me that they think it’s not the right time for me to be thinking about marriage, because i’m only just starting my career. would they have wanted me married earlier? of course. but that’s not exactly the path my academics and career have taken. the one time i mentioned that i might not pursue a career in law my dad went ballistic – specifically pointing to the amount of time and money i would have wasted in academics. and i have plenty of desi friends who have similar experiences.
Thanks, Camillionaire!
because desi women’s work is so often labeled as a “cute pastime” we’re also allowed a little more leeway in our cuteness
That’s true, and to add to that, the fact that women don’t feel as much pressure to be breadwinners can sometimes be a blessing in disguise. I went to law school as a “second career” student and I didn’t take out any student loans. I know I couldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for the fact that I was married and didin’t have to worry about rent or food.
If I was a guy, giving up a decent job to be a dirt-poor married student might have given me a bit more pause.
I think you can say that, because it’s something you’ve had. Sort of like the millionaire that proudly proclaims “money isn’t everything”
But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. The leeway goes hand in hand with the socially accepted option of marrying a man for financial security, even if that option is last ditch, #5534 on the list, right below selling your body for money, it’s still an option, and it’s still socially accepted, and that simply can’t be swept away.
I thought we weren’t talking about satisfaction, but about success. See what I did, purposely colliding multiple threads of conversation into one apocalyptic explosive reflexive comment here? Okay, I made the second point because subtlety isn’t my strong suit. You know, like Michael Bay. Should I stop talking now?
Camille, that’s such an adorable comment.
Ak,
your personal experiences are extremely out of the ordinary. Even camille and hema have ack’d my point to a certain degree, that this type of disparity exists.
This is not necessarily true. Read camille’s ‘cuteness’
This is seriously bizarro. I’d need to verify your parent’s Indian passports and birth certificates. I can’t imagine this coming out of parents born and raised in India. Unless it was one of those isolated crystaline structures (you know, like Superman had at the end of Superman 2 that protected him from the Kryptonian rays?)
The most liberal of liberal desi parents I know would be convulsing if their daughter wasn’t married or at least very strongly going in that direction by their late 20s. And their daughter could be curing cancer (or defending the guy who did, from a malpractice suit)
Believe it my friend, they do exist. I’m one of the lucky ones, I never had the marriage conversation with my parents nor do they give me a guilt trip about it.
I don’t really your analogy holds. The “other constraints” I face are being chronically underpaid, undervalued, and given very little support for career decisions. I will be consistently pressured to get married and have someone else support me, I will be penalized financially if I stay single, and I have a high likelihood that, if I end up with a student-type and support him, that he will leave me. Let’s not fetishize the starving artist lifestyle. Just because desi women may be able to pursue that a bit more than desi men doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t still starving.
Well, then they must also arrive to Indian functions on time, and also stand single file while waiting to board an Air India flight.
But Zen, even you agree that it’s a severe, severe outlier.
Yes, based on all the stories I’ve heard from others, I would believe they’re outliers.
And yes, my dad actually shows up EARLY to events and wonders what’s wrong with everyone else 🙂
I don’t think ak and Zen are that out there in their experiences. That said, I don’t feel that that is the prevailing attitude among desis in the U.S. Definitely more common now than it had been in the past, but I think the “push your daughter into marriage by 30” crowd still constitutes at least 51% of the desi parent crowd.
Anecdotally… the thing is, even among “cool” parents (who don’t do the pressure thing) I find that the aunties/uncles are UNBEARABLE. For every cool desi elder there are like 5 aunties/uncles lined up going “are you getting married? are you getting married? are you getting married?” Drives me INSANE.
I’ve usually found a response of “No, are you?” puts an end to the conversation. Or at least a damper.
No, it’s tough all around, but it’s easier if you start earlier than later, And women don’t have the barriers men do to start on this path earlier.
And likewise, let’s not completely demonize this either. Yes I understand lots of women take offense, and want to make sure to rub every male’s face in the ground that questions their earning capacity.
But there are a lot of women who do take on artist lifestyles, or make career shifts for this very reason. I knew a lady, who at 30, quit her high paying job to start her own graphic design company, when her income dropped from 100,000 annually to ~10,000 annually – believe me, she wasn’t “bemoaning the fact that someone else was supporting her” then.
Haha, I found that “no” led to a conversation about whether or not my ovaries were going to collapse, or why I should be afraid of being single. I’ve just started saying I’m a lesbian. 🙂
HMF, i concede that some people in society do dismiss women’s capabilities and careers as somehow less important than those of their male counterparts. i also have to say that some women do take advantage of this leeway. in many ways, though, i see rather a more equalization of society’s expectations from their members, irregardless of gender, while women themselves are choosing to revert back to a more family-friendly lifestyle. but i can’t say this has always been at the expense of career – e.g. many women doctors choose specializations that allow both a flexible schedule and lucrative salary, like dermatology.
my parents are the real (brown) deal. and their friends are actually quite similar to them. we also have an abnormal amount of late twenties-aged desis (female and male) in our social circle. of course, the parents are all trying to find us mates, but to them it’s the view that now that we are somewhat settled professionally, it’s time to give more focus to the personal life. but there’s never any mention of the career giving way for that to happen – i.e. nobody looks at it as a zero-sum game.
my sister just turned 32 yesterday – each year that passes in her unmarried life makes my mother just a little more worried/convulsive about her marital chances. but she has stated that she won’t leave boston or her job, and my parents respect this.
So here’s my question to you, what do they say when they’re questioned by other relatives and friends, because surely if they only mingled with their “cool liberal selves” it’d be a very quick game of poker if you get my meaning.
Do they come to you then? or do they tell them to piss off?
I wasn’t trying to demonize, just saying that it cuts both ways. What seems like a benefit in one light for some women can also be a huge barrier for others, that’s all.
May be an outlier, but my parents are the same. They never once asked me about getting married. Yes, they do also show up on time and stand in a queue but obviously they are not the only ones!
“are you getting married? are you getting married? are you getting married?”
Yes, on Feb. 31 next year. Of course, you’re invited, auntie-ji! 😉
But you’re Indian!
So, this thread is very confusing. Have we agreed that it is better for women if we are patronizing and condescending to them, or not? Because Justice Kennedy thinks the former. And an old white man can’t be wrong about how to treat women.
my parents are notoriously late to desi functions, but yes, are law-abiding air travel passengers, and definitely arrive on time for the check-in
at the last function i went to, i had the dubious honour of having introduced the couple who were being engaged, and was even made to stand-up during the ‘how i met my fiancee’ speech in a room of 400 people. needless to say, all the aunties and uncles congratulated me on this ‘good deed’ but not without pressing me on my own marital pursuits. my parents are different from the rest of their family in india, so yes, i do have to hear the lamentation whenever i visit, but i take it in stride. i also get it from even liberal aunties and uncles, because, quite frankly, every parent wants to see their children married. sometimes i get annoyed, but only depending on the way they ask the question. usually i tell them the truth : i just have not found anybody yet.
Ha. I used to do that, but it didn’t dampen the Flaming Aunties* enough. So I just give them a cryptic smile and say “I’m already married….to the sea.”
And then I walk away swiftly, because most of them don’t know what that means.
*in the ardor sense, not the Sapphic
Alright. look whatever, I’m not going to question peoples personal experiences here.. but everyone I know, and everyone they know and everyone they know, have always had a view that men are expected to have stable, provider jobs, while women have more leeway in making choices, with the obvious subtext being, “they don’t need to make as much money, they can if they want. but they don’t need to.”
My uncle has a son and daughter, I asked him if his children had chosen film as a career path what would his reaction be. He says, “if it was my son, I’d say no, if it was my daughter, I’d be ok with it”
If your parents are superdesis with a big red ‘S’ on their chest flying through the socializations that afflict the rest of us, kudos, however, they interact with us mortals all the time. And most of us have to deal with this b*llshit on a frequent, if not daily basis.
HoHo! Funnest thread ever.
And ust so all you desiguffins get snippy on baoji and biji and your desi roots, I wanted to introduce you to a hack who’s recently been in local news for her inanities.
you can read her bleatings here. She is untalented in spades. Like. She makes madonna look like Tolstoy. But, she’s a looker, and Hubby is a partner in a law firm in the oilpatch. Heck. Read the woman’s blog. And before you call me out as a misogynist, talented people line up to get published once with a 500 word article in the G&M. This woman has a weekly. What’s the deal here? She must be either supremely gifted in her charms or connected like a mf to get published in the topp canadian mags. I’m not alone in thinking this. She’s got a whole parody of her web site here. Then again it may be a Hinjew thing.
But I’m not complaining. It’s good to be a guy. But fun thread.
rahul, like j. kennedy, i also prefer the former. if only because it gives me the chance to brush up on those rusty tae kwon do skills i knew would come in handy one day.
one boyfriend actually posed the hypothetical as to whether i would quit law school (and, apparently, any chance of following my career dreams) if he asked me to marry him.
ak, your immorality shocks me!
Beats me. Maybe Shalini can make a movie about a desi guy passively-aggressively to become something just for the money, and chronicle the internal contradiction he faces every day, then compound that with bullshit marriage pressure. Hey, it can be verite.