"Does the subaltern speak? Not with my white dick in its mouth!"

Vogue India publishes designer fashion spread, featuring poverty-level Indian men and women.

I don't think it's just my length of time studying Indian history, the effect of Western hegemony on India, and post-colonial theory that makes me absolutely sick and enraged at this. Have we, over history and since the beginning of British domination in the seventeenth century, not progressed at all in dealing with the supposed split between Orientalism and Occidentalism? Is culture as a whole still bent on fetishizing an exoticism of Eastern ways of life?

I mean, what is the point of fashion? It's to create in-groups and exclude others; fashion defines who are the Right People, and who is outside and not in style. More importantly, it is also a way to reveal your affluence, through impractical and expensive belongings that you could only afford if you had the money. These people displayed would never fit the definition of The Right People, especially not by the Western-based definitions of Vogue; they're too busy TRYING NOT TO STARVE TO DEATH.

But it isn't just the condescension and ignorance of their situation that is disgusting. Look at the designer names- Burberry, Alexander McQueen, Fendi, Hermès Birkin. All European names. These are not Indian designers, highlighting the best of their culture for those of their culture reading it. Instead, it is the promotion of Eurocentricity as the norm, othering and putting in second place that which is native. Though India may have gained independence in the forties, clearly the principles of imperializing through capitalism flourish.


A man models a Burberry umbrella in Vogue that costs about $200. Some 456 million Indians live on less than $1.25 a day.

poem: debora greger, "My First Mermaid"

I read this in a poetry anthology and loved it; it's been sticking with me. It may be time for a poetry prompt post soon, friends- who's in?

My First Mermaid

                                I

In Florida, where these things can happen,
we stopped at the last roadside attraction.

Into a small theater decorated with mold,
we descended. Behind a curtain sagging like seaweed,

a wall of glass held back a wall of water.
And there in the springs, a woman wearing bikini top

and Lycra fish tail held an air hose to her lips
like a microphone. What was she waiting for?

Into the great open bowl of the springs,
a few fish drifted. They looked at the two of us.

They shook their heads and their whole bodies rippled.
Air bubbles shimmered in the filtered Florida sun,

each a silver O racing to the surface to break.
We'd missed the day an unscripted underwater blimp

of a manatee wobbled into view. The gray, whiskered lard
of a sea cow or the young woman who sang —

lip-synched, rather — some forgettable song,
her lipstick waterproof: which was the real mermaid?

 

                                II

Given the weight of water, nothing happens fast
to a mermaid, whether it's love or loss.

Not like the landlocked life, I wanted to warn her.
But here came a prince in street clothes,

trying to think thoughts that were heavy enough
to make himself sink to her level. His shirt ballooned,

a man made not into merman but to manatee.
Yet, in the small eternity it took for him

to grasp her slippery flipper, for her to find
his more awkward human ankle, and then

for them to turn, head over each other's heels —
a ring rolling away too beautifully to catch —

they lived happily ever after.
Until one of them had to stop for breath.

Debora Greger
The Kenyon Review
New Series, Volume XXVII Number 4
Fall 2005