Girls are our pearls

Tamil Nadu, 11.1.11

And boys are our toys?  ‘Girls are our pearls’ = a pro-women slogan on a car I saw somewhere in Tamil Nadu.  WD says it isn’t feminist because it suggests their only value is beauty and that they are decorative and collectible.  I think in India though, which continues to have such an exaggerated male:female birth rate, it is feminist.  The 2001 census (last available online, http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/fsex.aspx, so out-of-date) showed 933 females to 1000 males in India overall, with Haryana, the worst state, having only 861 females to every 1000 males.

Lots of public information or sloganeering here works on dodgy rhymes e.g. ‘speed thrills but kills’ and ‘don’t drive wrong and live long’, but I rather enjoyed the idea of M and L as ‘pearls’.

W is lying in bed ‘reading’ M’s ‘Brave Women of India’ (feisty and courageous Rani of Jhansi, Rani of Kittur, Rani Abbakka, Sultana Razia and Kalpana Chawla) so his indoctrination continues.