Most people following the mainstream Indian media must have been filling up on the IPL Cheerleaders Controversy for the past few months. We had an interesting conversation about this IPL Cheerleaders controversy in our own group and I thought that I would post it here. Note that the names have been altered for anonymity sake. < ...click on title for more...>

Sonata (female)

Tipping point:

http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2008/may/23ms.htm

My Thoughts:
What do you think of the recent piggy backing of cheerleading to
Indian cricket?
I have never been appreciative of cheerleading culture(excuse my
feminist rant…)
Still, if it is necessary and if it has to go on, it can.
What bothers me more is, why is it necessary to import cheerleaders
from other countries?

Living in the western world, we often hear grievances and at times
experience racial bias.
But there are a number of questionable and objectionable practices in
India. The indian society has had an open fetish for light skin.
We are now living in a more global world. What part of this bias is
considered a personal preference and what part is considered inhuman?

Your thoughts?

Merced (Male)

My Thoughts:(this was nice)

Solution 1.The problem would be solved if cheerleading be done in the center of the ground and cricket be played somewhere in the corner.
Solution 2. Street cricket should grow up faster with some cheerleading from locals. so cheerleeding could become global .
Solution 3.All the sports should start cheerleeding so they could stand to the fiery storm of cricket.(including chess,man i am sure vishwanathan anand would be damn happy to hear this.)

Now on a serious note.

come on! the fetish for skin colour is not that objectionable.
its got to do with the same reasons as why a girl instinctively goes for a rude tall hunk to a well-mannered short (may be bald or is it wellmannered ) guy (unless this guy owns a mercedes ofcourse). yeeah its evolutionary psychology.( theres lot of research out there)
“and certainly this wouldnt vanish with legal enforcements or a mail chain.”
probably it just happens in a moment of realisation may be as i was swept away with the smile of Marion Jones. and i strangely though prefer serena to sania (rey srini stop booooing.even i am thinking if i really mean this) and ofcourse interaction and proving themselves over a long course of time.

catch up later.match at mohali in some time .wow think all are blondes today .j/k

Mydas (male)

I think, entertainment business is really cruel.. because they treat people (or their performance) like objects..

the objects they want to sell..

we should really appreciate those performers that take lot of hard animosity and still put out wonderful shows..

Well.. it is necessary to import cheerleaders because swadesi cheerleaders in those costumes.. could trigger a huge ‘mahila-andolan’ which may even lead to the abortion of IPL.

It is not very easy to do what they do. i guess we have a long way to go before we get that kind of professionals back home.

And color of skin is not a race issue in india at all, because we are so well mixed.. Kajol and Rani Mukherjee would not have been such big stars had it been a reason.. we often see a lot of black and white couples around back home..

i am not sure if we ever admired white skin.. may be now it is the trend a bit.. but before gen-X, they were thought of to be utterly unattractive with light hair, and also accompanied by some mixed odours.. and we used to look really really old.
The only reason they got attention is the way the maintain and expose their bodies.. Ask this group as who likes Julia Roberts over Hally berry..

And ofcourse, with all that, and the very easy let-going atttitude, blonds could be very attractive

Ujas (male)

My 2 cents..

My mom was a staunch feminist. She would tell us stories of gender based discrimination, molestation and harassment to put us to bed ! go figure! She was the first working woman in the tri-districts of sklm, vskp and vzngrm - we still have the paper interview snippets from those days. The issue is real, begs for attention and is tightly coupled with other biases - like, for e.g., the gori girl fetish.

But we have to be equally wary of pseudo-feminist rants in an increasingly pleasure-centric society where women relish the pub culture and ‘laptop’ entertainment with equal enthusiasm and cry foul about cultural pollution only when they stand on the comparison charts next to some imported barbie doll bimbo. It is probably these rants that tell us indian men that our fantasies are just as justified - considering that the average indian girl herself is not ready to accept & admire her own body.

Donot even start running towards the mom and sister side - I have these talks in the open with them. It is true that I have a fetish for the average european blondie but my brown heart beats faster & harder every time I see that perfect dusky chokri. It is how these women evaluate each other individually that matters to me. You are what you think you are - individual or relative. In case you are wondering girls, Sunanda had more fanfare back in the day than most other ‘gori’er ones. Guys, sorry for breaking the secret. Mydas, I cannot agree more with your points about personality over tonality.

As far as the media and the two black beauties crying foul about mohali preferring one skin tone over the other, we have got to wonder about the real question though- How does this bias hurt us ?! We are a dusky majorae. We run our businesses, employ those goris (fly them over europe, russia wherever) to campaign, cheer for our crowds and pay them well. It does come across as awfully prejudicial - mohali at small, and our country at large. true. But I feel it is comparable (fetish wise, sin wise) to the average european blondie’s fetish to make out with the strong, tall, dark man. I asked a few blondies that I have worked with before - they went “50 cent over brad pitt any day baby!!”

Phrases like “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice” are open street talk in the American hoods.

Its all in the mind of the beholder, if not his eye

What do you think ?