Discovering the Sari

I have discovered the sari. It is one in a long line of discoveries that have reshaped me as a woman. As a sculptor, I have had to search deep into pre-history for positive images of the feminine, for images of women before their forms were distorted by negative cultural ideas. During this search, I found many empowering things about women. We were the first to weave, to write, to create the science of agriculture. All these truths have been proven in the archeological record though they are scarcely discussed in textbooks.

It is also true that in the past women and fabric have been intimately entwined. In the myth of the Babylonian goddess Innana’s descent into the underworld, She is required to take off Her clothing and jewels as She enters seven gates. When She is stripped naked, She is powerless and dies. Clothes here are equated with women and power. While the sari, said to be a mere 5000 years old, is not as ancient as this myth, the story does show what clothing once meant to women and the men who worshipped them.

The sari is not called “six yards of heaven” for nothing. It is at once protective and suggestive, majestic and natural. It is a flower, a wave of water, the jewel within the lotus. It is versatile, with more colors than the rainbow. And though there is a legend which states that the sari was created by a man, I highly doubt it since there are a countless number of wraps with regional variations. In the south of India where there is a strong remnant of matrilineal, pre-Aryan culture, saris abound and I suspect that with such strong female egos around men would have had little say in what or how women wore their clothes. A man may have suggested one style but the wrapping of a cloth around a woman’s body is as instinctual as swaddling a cloth around a baby. I can even recall draping myself in sheets and curtains as a girl pretending I was a princess many times without the help or suggestion of any men. I was surprised when I wrapped my first sari decades later that I had done it essentially the right way as a child without knowing it (sans pleats of course.)

My love affair with the sari came long after I had left childhood though. I forget cloth for a time, put it aside as I nearly drowned in the onslaught of all Western Culture offered. As I look back now I can truly say that the things I knew as a girl, that I set aside for all the non-essential things I was taught to prize, were of more value than the things I replaced them with. Now I am scrambling to relearn the compassion and self-love that once came so naturally to me then and I feel the sari is an essential part of that.

The sari as a representation of one of the first arts women created, as a part of our power and our history, is very important. I believe that aspect of it overshadows any negative connotations the cloth may have picked up since the time of the Moghul invasions and subsequent British colonization in India. During this time the sari became an oppressive tool, and perhaps because of this it has come to symbolize subjugation or outmoded traditionalism to some who are unaware of its long history. The sari was worn before the Moghuls and British, and was worn usually without a blouse or choli. Before these invasions, women in India had more equality and freedom than they may have today in the West. Thus reclaiming the sari is akin to reclaiming that equality and freedom, and is one step in shedding the inferiority complex created by imperialism. We should not be discarding the sari as “backwards,” but hailing it as ahead of its time.

I try to think of the sari as a palace, that for a short time was turned into a prison, but its main purpose was to be a palace and it can be again. I understand that many westernized Indian women do not like to wear saris or feel they are for “auntie” or too old-fashioned. They walk past the palace and recall all the negative things that happened there, but I am third-generation in the West; I never heard the screams. All I see is the beauty of it, and all it can be in the future.

The sari to me epitomizes femininity, and not in the western sense of one who is weaker or silly, but in the true ancient Indian and feminist sense of a powerful woman confident in her self, her mind and her sexuality. As a truly one-size-fits-all garment, the sari is a feminist emblem. It holds all women no matter the shape or size or height or colour equally. It makes us all beautiful. And when was the last time any woman any where heard of such an idea as we are all beautiful?

In the West, advertisers make it their business to convince women to hate themselves. No matter what you look like you are ugly. Is your hair curly? Straighten it. Is your hair straight? Curl it. Are you fair-skinned? Get darker. Are you dark-skinned? You need to be lighter. How much do you weigh? No matter what you say, you need to lose weight. Your breasts are too small. Get surgery. Your breasts are too big. Get surgery. You are getting older. You need surgery. What kind of clothes do you own? They are all awful; you need to buy different ones. What kind of skin do you have? You need make-up. (Have you ever thought of why they call it makeup? What do you think you have to make up for?) I am not saying that women should not adorn themselves, but I feel it should be done in the spirit of gilding the lily, not dolling up Quasimodo.

The fortuitous death of my television started me sculpting again, but it also heralded in the time when I stopped being so depressed about my appearance. I began really looking at myself through my own eyes and accepting who I was. I also began contemplating what beauty means in the West. And I became convinced that the perfect woman is a heroin addict, or at least someone with a decent eating-disorder and the body of a prepubescent boy. Or so all those size-zero models would make us think. Or is it the size-zero models? Isn’t it the men in the fashion industry who are dictating to women what is beautiful?

That is why I feel the sari is so important: because it is a cloth, a thing created by women for women. It is time we women started defining our own beauty and not judging ourselves according to masculine ideals. In ancient civilizations, Minoan, Sumerian, and other Earth-worshiping societies, a woman’s body was sacred. She was the living embodiment of the Earth. She was the conduit through which the soul entered into life, as the Earth was the passage into death. She is depicted as slender in some places, plump and representative of plenty in others. Ancient women found themselves beautiful in all forms, from their brilliant brains to their life-giving breasts and yonis (I am not being prudish. I just hate the sound of the word vagina. The sound is so ugly for something so sacred)!

The sari is as of yet outside the touch of western designers, and unless they run around cutting off three yards from every one made, it will still make all women feel like queens. It will still wrap around us protectively, reminding us of how great we are with every stitch. Its power is that is requires us only to be ourselves--it will do the rest with what we have. It will tell us, we are sufficient, we do not need to change an inch to satisfy it. Beauty is not skin deep, it radiates from the soul. So, if a woman feels like a celestial being, she is one. If she feels like a Goddess she becomes one. If she loves her body, herself, then all others will love her too and the world will be a better place for it.

Many people have said saris are limited, but many people have also said that women are limited too. Believe me, if I had to climb a mountain in a sari, I would find a way to wrap the pallu around a rock and use it like a rope and get to the top before all the others who laughed at me or told me I could not do it. Then I would use the sari again to make a flag and name the mountain after myself. For thousands of years women have worn saris while cleaning, cooking, and taking care of babies. They wrapped them differently of course, sometimes making the sari into pants to take care of the everyday things, but they did it.

Nevertheless, I do recognize that today’s saris are completely different animals than the ones our foremothers wore of sturdy cloth and without constricting petticoats. (Has anyone thought that we should join the 21st century and chuck those prudish Moghul/ British contraptions and wear a sari as we would any dress?). Current saris are made of filmy georgette and crepe and net, things fit for celestial maidens who have servants, no children, and no laundry to do. They are special clothes and many rightfully want to treat them with respect and feel remiss at putting such loveliness in jeopardy. The especially gorgeous saris made with sequins and work are not for everyday wear, but neither is an $800 Western party dress. It is not the fault of the sari that it makes us look and feel like queens, or that our everyday existences are so mundane and colourless that it cannot be worn daily.

With this said, I try to find every possible occasion to wear one despite the odds. So I wore a sari for three consecutive days selling my work at the Toronto Art Expo in March. I wore it from six in the morning to twelve at night and I am still alive. Canada is not warm in March and saris are made for Indian weather, so I wore long johns and boots. I wore heavy-weight silk saris and wore them under wool coats outdoors which kept me very comfortable. I walked up stairs and an escalator, carried bags and bronze sculptures, all with my sari and my twisted ankle. And when I got to my booth my pleats were still intact--thanks to safety pins!

At the show people told me that I looked like a piece of art work and that the cloth I wore was the most beautiful they had ever seen. In fact, I was hugged more there by people than I had been in years. It was as if they were thanking me for wearing a sari. For three days I was lucky enough to don a sari, but on the last day, I wore Western clothes and what a world of difference that made! Conversations that had been respectful, enlightening and even surreal, degraded to school-boy banter about breasts. People even evinced surprise that I was a sculptor; I was no longer the worthy creator of my own work! I felt naked. I felt dethroned. So what is the moral of my tale? There is none. The sari is a cloth. It is a work of art. It is whatever we dare to make of it. Do we dare to try and bring beauty into our everyday lives by wearing saris at dinner, to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, Earth Day, or for any excuse we can make up (for example: I just want to, okay!)? Or do we accept the drab and ordinary because we are afraid to shine like the sun? I leave it to others to find their own answers. I am going outside in my sari (without a petticoat) to celebrate being a woman and to enjoy rivaling the heavens for beauty.

By the way, I also wear saris because my beloved enjoys them too; besides all the others reasons this is the one closest to my heart.