I am a saree wearing, bindi adorning British Indian who finds it rather frustrating to not see saree or bindi or even salwar kameez in any media campaign except ofcourse when it is a spoof on ‘Asian People’ in popular programmes like Citizen Khan, Goodness Gracious Me or more recently in social media content like The Brown Bar. ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ is a motto most organisations flaunt with pride. Pick up any of their adverts or campaigns on ‘BAME representation’ or ‘Pluralism & Diversity’, you will see a white face, a black face (finally!), definitely a woman wearing a hijab but nobody wearing a saree/salwar-kameez and bindi.
As a first generation immigrant to the UK, I was pleased to hear about the ‘I am an Immigrant’ poster campaign run by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), that entailed expensive posters, billboards and visuals all across the London city. I waited patiently for an image that I could relate with so I could proudly take a ‘selfie’ with it and flaunt it. Sadly, even till this day, I am waiting.
As almost an insult to the injury, a few days back, Facebook prompted me to ‘Create Your Own Avatar’, a cartoon like miniature that social media users can make of themselves by stylising facial features and adding accessories. The service that launched by facebook in UK and USA is yet to be launched in India. The advert that popped up had a few ‘Avatars’ including an image of an ‘Asian’ looking woman wearing the ‘Hijab’.
‘Avatar’ is a Sanskrit word, though adapted in Modern English dictionary in reference to a gaming icon, it actually is a concept where the form of a living being is acquired by the omnipotent, omniscient when He descends as a mortal. It is a concept where ‘Gods’ especially Vishnu descends on Earth in myriad forms including Matsya (fish) as the first form of life on earth; Kachhappa(tortoise) indicating life’s moved from water to land; Varaha (wild boar)representing life’s adapting to land alone in process of becoming a mammal; Narasinha (half man and half animal) evolution of human from animal; Vamana (Brahmana) a dwarf Brahmin who revealed his true form and covered the entire cosmos in two steps; followed by Avatars Parshurama, Rama, Krishna, Balrama, Buddha and the tenth Avatar, Kalki which is yet to arrive in theKalayuga.
As an ethnic Indian, a Hindu woman, the advert via Facebook did little, if that, to convince me and infact insulted the very concept according to my faith, even though the advert must have appeared as a result of ‘targeted marketing’ campaign on my Facebook timeline.
Even if I ignored this deeper insult, I was shocked that a social media giant with a prominent user base of my ethnic and social profile, Globally, has no ‘Avatar’ to visually represent me. In fact, none of the other social media platforms, or tech user communication interfaces had any visual representation of my social, ethnic profile either.
The famous words of Shirley Chisholm, “If they don’t offer you a seat at the table, bring your own chair’, are etched in my heart. As a rights campaigner, and livid at this oversight and ignorance, this exclusion, I took to commonly used social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram and ofcourse Facebook sharing my displeasure and unhappiness about this ‘cultural misappropriation’.
As a large employer and community of such multi-cultural users & developers, with offices around the Globe, I wondered what Facebook’s Diversity & Inclusion policy statement indicated so I quote their recently published 2019 report: “Our design choices are important, too. Designing for inclusivity leads to better decisions and better products.”
Reassuring as it sounds on paper, there is little evidence of inclusivity in product development anywhere. In summary, media & social media campaigns:
Exclude one of the largest online user community in its representation;
Misrepresents cultural and social diversity; and
Stereotypes all ‘Asian’ women as Hijab wearing.
Internet and data usage surged in the recent months since the lockdown, globally owing to COVID-19 crisis. Currently estimated at 574 million, the number of monthly active internet users in India, the largest social media user base for any social media platform, has grown 24% over that of 2019, indicating an overall penetration of 41% in the last year*. Facebook in pursuit of a sizeable, underexplored userbase in India recently took a 9.99 percent stake in Jio platforms, the tech subsidiary of Reliance Industries, giving itself almost a gateway into the country’s currently offline population. Campaigns promoting saree have been run on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram increasing their popularity and usage further – remember, #100SareesPact as an example?
Pamela Anderson, Nicole Scherzinger, Naomi Campbell, Paris Hilton, Liz Hurley, Madonna, Michelle Obama, Her Royal Highness Princess Kate Middleton, British Former Prime Minister Theresa May, Oprah Winfrey all have worn and loved the saree. Women in countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia, India wear sarees. Almost forgot that there is even a barbie doll wearing a saree now!
It is now for me, a Social Action Campaign wherein some of us have reached out to Facebook to run a joint Nation-wide campaign to create a repository of diverse images for the social media platform to adopt. Though I am yet to receive even the slightest acknowledgement from Facebook, which in due course I am sure will happen.
Let this debate not die out at creation of cartoons but be part of your mainstream discourse while writing Diversity & Inclusion policies, while designing advertising campaigns on Immigrants and while putting up pictures of a ‘brown’ or a ‘black’ face. Not all of us wear ‘Hijab’, many of us proudly wear a saree and bindi - #ThisIsMyAvatar.
Twitter: @KaulLakshmi
(*The analysis is part of the ICUBETM report prepared by data, insights and consulting company Kantar and was quoted by LiveMint.)
