Contradictions

“I want to love glitter and also stand up for the double standards that exist in our society. I want to wear pink and tell you how I feel about politics.”

Taylor Swift

Over the years, I have constantly questioned the contradictions that define me — sometimes they are so drastic that I feel like maybe I’m not being true to myself, maybe I’ve created a façade and I choose to believe it because that’s who I want to be. But, life is funny in a way that I’ve been constantly forced to see that contradictions are normal, that I can exist on two separate polarities and still be me. Every time I feel like I’m cheating, I go back to my undergrad literature class when my professor, in his strong affirming tone read out Whitman’s quote:

“Do I contradict myself? / Very well then, I contradict myself. / I am large, I contain multitudes.”  

For Whitman, contradictions are symbolic of Hegelian dialectics in everyday life — there’s a thesis and an anti-thesis, and they are in opposition to each other but they do lead to a synthesis, and in this case, to universal truths. Maybe it’s too far-fetched to be applying Hegelian dialectics to my own personal existence, and maybe that’s not even what it means in the first place (four years of cultural theory and I still don’t fully understand even 10% of it) but in my mind it works. It justifies my undying optimism against my helplessness in the face of certain realities, and it lets me be independent and yet crave a kind of dependency. These contradictions are personal, and sometimes I am led to believe that they might not be contradictions at all. Yes, being dependent is the antonym of being independent but they are concepts that can be felt in varying degrees, right? That is why we can continue to be badass independent people but yet have space that allows us to rely on someone else. I have come to the conclusion that nothing is absolute, everything is relative and everyone has their own versions of absolute and relative.

Now, coming back to the statement that I quoted at the beginning. Everything listed there, and the way that it is listed sounds like contradictory, opposing ideas — loving glitter but being fiercely opinionated; loving pink but being actively political — but there is nothing contradictory about them. When I heard Taylor Swift say this in her documentary, I wanted to stand up and clap because she just expressed what I have been fighting against for years. It made me reflect on this closely, taking me on an obvious tangent of personal, existential contradictions and I realized that this wasn’t an example of that. This was an example of societal stereotyping which pitted these things against each other, making them appear as contradictions despite there being nothing contradictory about them.

Why can I not love glitter and stand up against the double standards of society? Loving glitter says nothing about my ability to be rational, practical and fearless, all it says, is that I love glitter. Why can I not love pink, wear pink all the time, and be political? Does politics have a color and does pink not cut it? Well, I thought about it for a while and like most problems these days, it came down to gender stereotyping. It is a well-known fact that glitter and pink are associated with women — women who are supposed to be intrinsically optimistic, nurturing and pure so that they can create a space of light for the men who are to deal with real, harsh, negative realities of the larger world. The men don’t want to hear their wives talk about the same, depressing news that they’ve heard all day, they want to escape into a home that is a respite from the outside pessimism of the world — for everybody who nodded at this, this is 1800s behavior. This is what Alcott was trying to fight with Jo’s character, and a 100 years later, Swift is fighting through her music. In her documentary, she talks about how she was expected to be a “good-girl” — a tag, that I am more than familiar with. But, society dictates that a good- girl doesn’t voice her opinions in controversial matters, a good-girl doesn’t express her anger or frustration against anything, and a good-girl smiles through every tragedy, even if it breaks her. Well, I’m calling bullshit (oops, to all the adults in my life who thought I was a good-girl, yes I swear). Women and politics has always been a wide discourse, and it has led to some conscious change but not on a personal, grassroot level. The women that we see in politics today, probably had to fight their way into it and it’s incredible that they had the strength to block out the noise and just go for it. But, on a personal, individual level, society is still skeptical of women’s opinions about the “real-world,” and it is a product of years of conditioning against it. But, I think it’s time to start reflecting and consciously breaking from that historical conditioning. It is more than okay for women to be political, actually it’s natural for us to be political, especially at a time where the fascist fever has swept large parts of the world. Be it the women at Shaheen Bagh in India, or the women marching in resistance against Trump in the US, or women like me who are slowly breaking out of their shell and realizing that our voices need to be heard — women have opinions, and they matter.

I know that there is also another perspective on the whole glitter, pink and politics narrative where politics is inherently associated with pessimism and darkness but that’s a whole new article in itself. For now, let’s stick to this. Let’s understand that someone (regardless of their gender) has the right to not be forced into boxed identities, and has the right to opinions, even if they “contradict” their personality. It is not naïve of me to be optimistic in the face of cynicism, it is brave. It is not hopeless of me to believe in a better future despite being surrounded by tragic news every day, it makes me fight harder. And it is not childish of me to love glitter and pink because it gives me the confidence that I need to be myself while I take the system down. You still want to consider these things contradictory to each other? “Very well then, I contradict myself. / I am large, I contain multitudes.”