I distinctly remember, as an 11-year-old girl, I was laughing about something when my mother made a remark: “Why are you always laughing so loudly?” She had asked. “Girls shouldn’t be laughing like that.”
Out of all the remarks that have come to me for being a girl—ranging from the way I should dress to the way I should sit—this remark has oddly stood out to me the most.
My brain couldn’t comprehend why laughing could possibly be something that I wasn’t supposed to do, merely because I was a girl, or why my brother, who had been laughing with me wasn’t told to be quiet as well, to curb his loudness.
Women in India have always been subjugated by the patriarchy on every little aspect of their lives, be it choosing a career or finding a partner. Women’s choices and lives are dictated by what society demands from them. The moment a woman starts making choices for herself the very foundation of the patriarchy is threatened.
But what I hadn’t realised then was that the pillars of patriarchy are so weak that they could be threatened by the mere sound of a woman’s loud, carefree laugh. That something as harmless as a woman indulging herself with a laugh could be something that society cannot possibly handle. Is that a woman actually enjoying herself? Shame!
Our society has always seen women as docile creatures, quiet and demure, and the sound of a woman freely laughing threatens this idea of her that we have fit in our heads so well.
So many of my female friends have, on different occasions, also been told by their mothers or other relatives, that they laugh too much for a woman. Because how dare they freely express themselves?
These might seem like harmless remarks to many but they are deep-rooted in our country’s sexism and it affects women when they are shamed and silenced for something that is so natural. Laughing is something that women ought to control, while men laugh boisterously, their mouths open, slapping their thighs.
But in a society that always controls women, it shouldn’t surprise me as much that every sign of a woman’s individuality is a threat, and that’s why a woman’s laugh is thought of as shameful, as something to be quieted, reduced to shy little giggles, and nothing bolder than that.
But I’m here to tell you, ladies, don’t hold back on the laughs. Laugh as much as you want. Smash the patriarchy with one belly laugh at a time!