It was almost 12 at night. I was snuggled up in my bed and relentlessly scrolling through my Pinterest, compulsively saving pins on desi outfits. I desperately wanted to find a sheer chikankari kurti, and so I set off on my quest. I ravaged through not just Pinterest, but Myntra, Meesho, and even Instagram! Finally, I stopped myself and wondered why I’m suddenly so obsessed with kurtis and desi fits in general. My mind went back to an oddly embarrassing memory of when my fourth-grade self had worn a pink kurti to school on Republic Day when everyone else had worn regular clothes. I had tried my best to tuck it out of sight, but unfortunately it was too late to escape the judgement of my classmates who thought it was weird and un-cool that I was wearing a traditional outfit for seemingly no apparent reason. I remember being indignantly annoyed at my parents for forcing me to wear the kurti in the first place.Â
This memory of mine begs the question: why did we have this aversion towards traditional Indian wear as kids and preteens—especially girls? What about my kurti invited such judgement, apart from the fact that it was different from everyone else’s outfits? This made me think of the well-known phenomenon of hating pink, which… was never about the colour pink. It was about the stereotype that came with it. Maybe disliking traditional Indian wear is a desi version of that.Â
If we think about what pink represents, our minds automatically associate it with femininity. Blue is for boys, and pink is for girls, right? The way it was framed, pink was meant for little girls. And so during our preteens, when fitting in mattered the most, if we dared to admit that we liked pink, we’d immediately be labelled as “childish”, undoubtedly warranting a judgemental “Ewww, you like pink?” from a scrawny prepubescent boy. According to kid logic, admitting to like pink somehow translated into being too silly to be considered cool.
Similarly, when we think of traditional Indian wear, what comes to mind? We’d often be forced into wearing uncomfortable traditional clothes at festivals, which were usually picked out by our parents. For me, traditional wear sometimes meant feeling restless in what I thought was an unflattering outfit. Moreover, wearing a kurta or salwar kameez often felt way too grown-up, almost aunty-like, and definitely not cool. Jeans and shorts, pants and tops, and any other fit that was more Western (and more specifically, gender-neutral) was the norm, such that traditional wear was reserved for only special occasions.Â
What both have in common is that they are symbols of stereotypical femininity. We didn’t really have much control over them, given that pink and traditional wear would often be forced onto us by either our parents or by societal norms. Being pink and cutesy, or being kurti-clad and adorned with jhumkas felt un-cool because of how feminine it was, and that unfortunately meant not being taken too seriously. And after being sold lies about femininity being a sign of regression, no way would I wanna wear a pink kurti to school.
However now, we seem to be “regressing” to good ol’ pink and desi. Why is that?
Lately I’ve been seeing many reels of the “Wear something traditional, you’ll look like a princess” trend, which celebrates traditional clothes for a change. And for a while now, pink has firmly embedded itself into the “it girl” aesthetic (I mean, just look at the album cover of It Girl by Aliyah’s Interlude). Looks like we’re reclaiming these narratives and putting our own spin to them. Now we’ve matured enough to understand that there is nothing wrong with being feminine in the way we present ourselves. In fact, it’s that very femininity that many of us girls have grown to appreciate. Reclaiming it gives us the power to control how we’d like to don our pink and desi without anyone else determining whether it’s “cool” enough. Embracing femininity for me particularly makes me feel more confident, rather than uncomfortable like the ten-year-old me felt that day.Â
This brings me to another, far more recent memory of me wearing a pink kurti, jeans, and jhumkas on one of the first days of college orientation. I stepped into an elevator full of girls as I left my room, and immediately felt a bit “too much” given that most of them wore regular jeans and tops. But then my inner ten-year-old was almost instantly relieved when one of the girls remarked,“I love it when girls dress up!”
And now, I love it too.