I was noodling around on Facebook today, looking for something I could write about for my blog, when I came across a short video. It was an attractive, thirty-ish woman, talking about an experience she had on a train, where another woman had warned her to keep her little girl away from the window because the sun would make her 'dark skinned and ugly'. What this woman was talking about was the presumption that darker skin is ugly, apparently rife in India. It's not just racism we have to deal with, it's the old prejudice against a tan, which in Western countries has been extinguished for a long time, but which persists in some cultures, presumably based on the idea that it indicates one has been working outdoors and is therefore a peasant, rather than an upper-class person who can stay out of the sun. The woman in the video was expressing a view that such prejudice is outmoded, and in a country where everyone is some shade of brown, deeply silly. If you want to see the video for yourself, HERE IT IS.
I've no argument with this. She spoke well and articulately and I agreed with every word. What caught my eye, though, and made my ears go back, were some of the comments people had posted.
I'm not talking about racism here. I wouldn't waste my time writing about that kind of pathetic nonsense. There may have been some racist comments, but not that I saw. I didn't read all of the comments. The comments to which I'm referring had nothing to do with the content of the video.
They were about fruit.
You see, as she talked, this woman was cutting up a large fruit. I don't know what kind of fruit, it looked like some kind of melon, no doubt something they have in India. I think this woman is Indian, based on her accent, although she could have been Pakistani, Bangladeshi or so on. The thing about this fruit, though, was that several people were jumping all over the comments complaining about the way she was cutting it up and saying that it was wasteful.
Now, this wasn't a cookinig video, it was a social comment video. There was no clue as to the purpose for which she was cutting up the fruit. For all I know, it was to make some curry or something. I mean, I say fruit, but it might well have been one of the many fruits that we treat as vegetables. You know, like aubergines, cucumbers, tomatoes, capsica, and so on. Or perhaps she was going to make jam, or chutney or something. We will probably never know. And personally, I don't care either, any more than I care about her hairstyle, her dress, or what I could see of the decor of the room she was in.
The thing that bothered me was the way people seized on the one thing they could take issue with and jumped all over it.
It seems to me that this is indicative of something we see a great deal nowadays: the keenness of so many people to nose into whatever other people are doing and correct it. Or chastise them, or whatever. I'm not talking about things that are illegal, like littering, or antisocial, like not picking up your dog's poo (I'm sure we can all have something to say about that). You know, things where the person's action is actually going to affect us in some way. I'm talking about things that are purely none of anyone else's business. Like the clothes a person has chosen to wear, or the kind of collar they have on their dog, or what they are eating for lunch.
And we see such rage! I have seen people lash themselves almost into hysterics because someone called their dogs furkids. Honestly.
Where does it all come from, not just the rage but the sense that one is somehow entitled, that it's even meritorious, to dictate to other people how they live? I suppose the prevalence of social media could be a factor. But to me that seems overly simplistic. I think social media, like drink, just makes people express more of what they really are anyway, and that the driver for this Karenesque behaviour must be something more sinister. I would love to hear from readers, so if you have an opinion about this please do tell me in the comments. Meanwhile, my challenge to everybody for today is to mind our own business.
In other news, in the park this morning I saw a man attempting to get his dogs to go to the lavatory by showing them what to do - lifting his leg against a tree, and later, squatting. No, I did not say anything.
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