Appearances...

While on the train one day, I noticed a woman reading a magazine. I was amazed at the number of ads that contained women in them - I would have thought one wouldnt put women on it, because that would mean you would attract only the men with the ad, and not the women. But if so many ads have women on it, perhaps it is targeting both men and women.

And the other trait I noticed was that all the women had perfect bodies. Each one looked like a gym instructor, and they all wore skimpy clothes. Sitting in India, when you read articles about how ads are "objectifying women" it always sounds funny. Here though, it all starts to look real. Women do look at the ads, and they do try to look like that. I have seen some how spend a long time in front of the mirror trying and re trying to tie their hair and then pull out strands so as to get the I-dont-care-what-my-hair-looks-like look. Others pull their shirts out and let it hang with just the right amount of carelessness. There really is nothing so very casual about "casual" anymore. Casual is a very carefully pulled together look with the entire outfit coordinated according to style and color. It takes just as much time doing that as it does to get dressed formally. But I digress...

What I really want to talk about is how everyone wants to be the skinny girl in shorts and a tank top. And being in NY, thats all you really see. Really. I mean, at least dont they want to wear something different from the other girl? Why does everyone want only white during the summer? And everyone is in black tights and boots in the winter. Worse, even if you were looking for something else, you wouldnt find them, because shops only carry what they think are "in season". So much for variety and inventiveness.

There are so many unwritten rules about dressing here. Women who wear long skirts are always "old". Young women wear short skirts that show as much leg as possible. Only old women wear high necked blouses. So the high necked blouses always come in dull grey or beige or brown. The bright colors are for young women, and they come with plunging necklines. Whoever said older women dont like colors, btw? And why shouldnt young women dress with some modesty? I hate the way the shops assume things about everyone. Why wont they make anything for the stray cases who dont think like the mainstream? 

Soda drinking Infants

When I first came here, I was naive and innocent about food - in my world, one simple bought ingredients from the person selling it for the lowest price, brought it home, cooked and ate it. So when I first went to the stores here, I would naturally pick the cheapest vegetables, cheapest milk and cheapest meat. It took me a while to understand that America's shops operate differently compared to Indian ones and that I would have to change my shopping behaviour to buy healthy foods.

It took me a long while to understand how everything here is "mass produced", and what the effects of such production were. Most of what I learnt, I learnt through websites that may or may not have been right. So finally, I bought a book named " Fast food nation".

It is interesting, especially if the kind of food that is available here exasperates you. There have been so many times when we were on a roadtrip when I wanted to eat some "real" food and found that fast food was the only option available everywhere. We would end up buying loads of fruits from some local supermarket before starting off on trips later on. Eitherway, fast food nation has lots of details on how the fast food industry came to be what it is today. One of the details given there was about the advertising by big brands. For example, companies get funding from corporations such as McDonald's to advertise on their behalf - say there was a bottle maker that wanted to sell a bottle for X amount of money. Corporations like Mcdonald's give them money to put their logo on it before selling. The bottle making company is obviously making a profit, and McDonald's is doing their advertising which eventually translates into more business for them. Apparently putting these logos on infant's milk bottles makes them more receptive to the logo later on in life. Another fact mentioned in the book was that many infants start drinking soda instead of milk.

I did not believe that last part at all, at least not until I saw it myself. I thought, which parent would give their children soda instead of milk? One of my relatives had come home with their one year old son. The little guy could walk and could say a few words. A perfectly normal, perhaps slightly hyperactive child. After dinner, the mother wanted to drink soda - she said it was good for digestion! Well as soon as the mother drank soda, the child started asking for it, and was only satisfied after he got it. What surprised me even more was the promptness with which the mother gave it to the kid. For me that action is the height of carelessness.. but for her it was just another normal food item that she was sharing with her son.

Thats when I realized that many parents do not understand why soda is bad. They do not realize that they are sowing the seeds for a life long consumption pattern, so they feel it is ok for the child to drink soda when they want it. What this results in are children with an addiction to sugared water who will grow up and argue with you that diet coke is 0 calories and so one it is just like drinking water. (Which was the reason given by one of my plump coworkers for having about 4 sodas a day while being on a diet).

What can I say.. our lifestyles have changed so much, so irrevocably.  In India, rich people are almost always fat. Well, at least the ones who are not movie stars. Poor people, on the other hand, have perfect figures. I remember a bus ride I once took in which some gypsy women got into the bus somewhere near Jayanagar. I stared at them for a while, because their bodies had a grace and strength that one does not see often. My mother was with me, and when we got off the bus, she too remarked that they had perfectly sculpted bodies. We had a conversation around this and concluded that the rich people eat rich food and do no work and therefore get fat. And the poor people eat fat free foods and do a lot of physical labor and therefore stay in shape. When I came here, it was the exact opposite trend that I saw. The rich ones here are always in shape. They eat organic. They go to gyms. They buy from local farmers markets. They avoid plastic. The poor on the other hand eat McDonalds and dunkin donuts and jack in the box. They go to walmart and cannot afford gyms. If you think about it, it actually makes sense in their world to do what they do - because buying raw materials and cooking a meal often costs more time as well as money than just buying a burger from McDonald's. Thus the poor end up being fat and unhealthy here.

Today I look at fast food chains with a little bit of fear. They have exhausted their possibilities for expansion in the developed countries and are opening shops in places like India and China. Right now the prices are high enough that the local competition there can survive. The corporations will however eventually find a way to subsidize the cost of those items enough to close down competition, like they have done everywhere else. That could eventually lead to a situation where through out the length and breadth of India, we will only get hamburgers. And our children would be drinking soda instead of milk. I hope we have enough sense left in us as a people to not let that happen to us.