BOIS LOCKER ROOM: THE OPENING OF PANDORA’S BOX

The Boys’ Locker room incident needs no introduction. It was impossible to go a day without seeing new updates and hot takes by everyone- from news agencies to your average Joe. We’ve all been the bearers of virtual placards- calling for arrests and legal action, condemning the boys, and coming out with our own stories. Nevertheless, I’m here to tell you that we could have prevented this. Yes, you read that right.

The Boys’ Locker room incident took the nation by storm. Outraged people from every walk of life were quick to put up stories and statuses condemning the incident. However, something I found hard to digest was our propensity to view it as an isolated occurrence, instead of a consequence of the problematic ideologies that have been perpetrated since we were old enough to think. To put it bluntly- when you raise a kitten amongst a litter of bunnies, it will grow to hop, not walk.

Whether people are born with agency, or whether they’re products of their environment is an age-old debate that is surprisingly relevant today, especially in the light of this incident. As a child, almost every single one of us was exposed to content that reinforced our beliefs that bodies were meant to be objectified. Be it cartoons like Motu-Patlu that underlined heavily, the difference between body types to pageants, where meeting certain specifications was mandatory, it’s no wonder we grew up convinced that there existed an ‘ideal’ and consequently, felt obligated to judge those who didn’t meet them.

At the age of eleven, I was a pre-pubescent girl who’d just begun to discover my own body, when I was shamed for being flat-chested. Did I feel bad? Yes. Did I do anything about it? No. The truth is, body-shaming has become so normalized, most people don’t even realize they’re BEING shamed. Every time we comment upon how incredulous it is that the ugly kid at the back that no one speaks to managed to date the ‘hottest’ girl in class, every time we point out that the hair on someone’s leg is growing back and every time we subtly fat-shame our friend because “dosti mein sab chalta hai”, we become a part of this culture. And when you’re used to receiving, as well as making these comments so often, shaming becomes just another part of the conversations you have every day- unremarkable, and ordinary.

Each and every single one of us- and I don’t care what gender you identify with- has been guilty of propagating appearance-centric judgement, knowingly or unknowingly. But the hard truth is, the structure of shaming is a pyramid. It begins with a seemingly harmless comment or a joke, and ends with incidents like the Locker Room, or worse. These teenage boys felt it was okay to reduce those girls to a sum total of their genitalia, because someone, somewhere didn’t call them out when they did it the first time. And if we’re going to march up indignantly to our social media handles and upload ten stories calling for legal action, we have to call out the little stuff as well.

If we genuinely want to put an end to the culture of shaming, we cannot afford to wait for incidents like these to act as our wake-up call. It begins by actively monitoring our regular conversations- by calling out our friends that discuss someone’s stats, or comment on someone’s weight, or ask someone to go to the parlour. We have to realize that being the only species on the planet with a capacity to think is a privilege, and hence, we need to think beyond boobs and waists. Our species put people on the Moon, invented telephones, and discovered fire- with all that our intellect is capable of, let’s not reduce ourselves to discussing appearances.

Because honestly, shaming isn’t just restricted to locker rooms and Instagram groups- we do it every day. And remedial action isn’t just restricted to legal recourse- sometimes, all we need to do is say, that’s not cool.