Mallu Gaze

Kerala is infamous for its male glaze. Females, especially visitors, have often reported how bad it is, compared to other States. Varathan (2018) – an adaptation of Straw Dogs (1971) – was one such film that dwelled on this and managed to capture that eerie gaze so well. Any western cultural import symbolizing modernity (like jeans, skirt, a lipstick, high heels, bobbed hair) or an act (of speaking fluent English or driving a car/bike or courting a male friend) - something just snaps inside him - like a raw nerve touched. Why this unnatural reaction when fairer sex transgresses set-expectations. Does it intimidate and make them vulnerable?

What accentuates the irony is - Kerala scores above most of India on all social indices, be it, our cultural and religious diversity, educational, health and social indexes including female empowerment! Historically, Kerala coasts have been fortunate to imbibe diverse influences – Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch, French and the British – something, which should have essentially broadened our outlook, but we have remarkably managed to stay regressive. Why?

Now, Male Gaze (g. Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory) is universal. The origins can be traced to branches of psychology itself. Evolutionary Psychology talks about human tendency to focus on visual aesthetics of potential mates as primal. Hence, a preferential attraction towards certain visuals over others. Social Psychology adds that some factors of socialization play a crucial role in defining the societal norms regarding gender and sexuality, contributing to the solidification of male gaze. But then, this is true for all societies. How can Kerala be different? There must be roots, deeper than those educational and equality indices.

A serendipitous discovery - stumbled upon a chapter  ‘Nangeli: The woman with no breasts’ in Manu Pillai’s ‘The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahman’. The legend of Nangeli may be known to many. The story goes – there existed a regressive breast tax (mula karam) where females were surveyed from girlhood to adulthood and taxed for their breast. Women of low caste could not cover their breast if they could not afford the tax. A humiliated Nangeli is said to have severed hers and offered them and died soon after. Over the years, Nangeli (a lower caste) became the symbol of female and caste oppression, but facts are far from truth. Manu goes on to debunk the myth brilliantly, but in his narrative, I found a possible explanation for the dreaded gaze of Kerala.

Kerala society have had a matrilineal/matriarchal past. Some anthropologists even regard Kerala's system of matrilineal kinship as the continuation of a practice that at one time existed all over the world.18^th century Kerala was very different and highly liberated compared to other societies of the peninsula. Given the tropical climate, ‘Across the coast, the torso – male and female – was not covered. Upper caste spotted a shawl (not for reasons of modesty) but only as a mark of honor.’ Speaking of honor, ‘this was the land where Portuguese in 16^th century beheld bare-breasted princesses negotiating treaties of trade’… ‘also the land where women enjoyed physical and sexual autonomy…husband could always be replaced...The coast was rich with tales of great women – Unniarcha (warrior) to Umayamma of Attingal”.

But in 19^th century, British not only brought a new political order but also a new sense of ‘morality’. And ‘the sexual gaze of the patriarchal Victorian turned towards the breast in Kerala’ painting a barbarian picture of Kerala. ‘Women were told a bare body was a mark of disgrace and that Dignity lay in accepting male’s objectification and honor in docility’. Lord Maucalay’s education system helped further, in instilling in Kerala male psyche, a sense of extreme guilt. ‘Men studying in big cities received jibes about their topless mothers having more than one husband. These men dragged into Kerala the masculinity of their patriarchal interlocutors and women..’ too were exposed to new definitions of femininity.

Victorian Era draws inspiration from conservatism proponents like Edmund Bruke, who believed that humans are innately depraved and steeped in the Original Sin, hence, unable to better themselves. Hence it was considered better to rely on ‘latent wisdom’ of prejudice which accumulates slowly over the years (he implied the Church and landed aristocracy).

So there you have it.

A male psyche that found comfort in a liberal matriarchal society for generations was basically censured by males of a different land and put to shame. And now, to fall back to a subservient position and be ridiculed once again in a global village is unimaginable. Today, the repressive male is extremely cautious and sensitive about his docile partner. Any act of liberation invites an involuntary reprisal, betraying a fear that stems from the subconscious. The very ‘unreasonableness’ can only indicate a weakness of a hidden past. And, it may not be just the fear of losing the ‘conferred’ superiority but, even a seething shame to admit to a ‘bosom past’ he enjoyed. This conflict– of an imposed alien culture vis-à-vis indigenous instincts – explains the irrational revulsion towards a female’s progressive transgressions.

It is a funny irony though – the same western symbols of progress (a jeans or lipstick) can threaten the same  western Victorian values of an eastern psyche.