I got my first smartphone at the age of 16. But it came with an unspoken rule – good girls in my family did not have a social media presence until they graduated from university.
I quietly made an Instagram account under a different name.
It was my first time on a social media platform. I could see how other women lived their lives: the clothes they wore, the places they visited, and the things they did.
I was tempted, too – to post my life on Instagram, to express who I was – even though I knew this kind of forthrightness was taboo for my family.
I got my chance soon enough.
It was my friend’s birthday party, and she had invited us all to Domino’s for a treat. After hours of convincing, my father agreed to let me go.
I wore a short, sleeveless dress I had bought from Delhi two months earlier. That, too, involved a lot of negotiation with my parents.
My mother said, “Girls from good families don’t go around wearing such dresses.”
“How does my frock make me belong to an indecent family?” I asked.
My mother replied, “I am so sick of you and your stupid arguments.”
“And I am sick of you nagging me for every small choice I make for myself”, I replied.
It was not uncommon for my mother to criticise me for my clothing choices. I brushed off her comments and left.
At the party, there was pizza but also photos, lots of photos.
My best friend, who had a better phone camera than mine, took a lot of pictures of me.
Surprisingly, I could suspend all my insecurities in front of the camera; I could be whoever I wanted, even if only for fleeting moments. I let myself laugh, blush, and giggle all at once, and experiment with my hand gestures and facial expressions. I wanted to capture my excitement, the excitement of wearing a new dress and attending my friend’s birthday party, the excitement of feeling like a pretty woman.
I came back home that night feeling exhilarated and spent a good deal of time choosing a picture to post. I found one where I was standing, my right hand sifting through my hair and the other on my waist. I loved how confident I appeared in that photograph. I posted it on Instagram with the caption “My life, my rules”.
Almost immediately, my comments section filled with appreciation from my school friends, mostly girls. For the first time, I looked and found myself beautiful and worthy of appreciation. I could not stop looking at my pictures, just couldn’t.
For a moment, I had become one of those pretty girls on Instagram.
My happiness, however, was painfully short-lived.
My aunt’s two sons found my profile. My cousins were hardly two or three years older than me, but they had always been very judgmental about how vocal I was for a girl.
They took screenshots of my profile and shared it on a family WhatsApp group with comments about whether my parents had spent money on my education only so I could learn to dress this way. They accused me of inviting men to look at me with lustful eyes. They had shared my photographs with the comment, “Mama-Mami dekh lo, yeh ladki ke kaam”. (Uncle-aunty, see what this girl is up to”).
The WhatsApp group, which had almost every member of my paternal family, including elders and my cousins, erupted. Every member of the group had something to say.
From having my upbringing questioned, being called a liar and a shameless woman, to my parents being criticised for giving me too much freedom, I was trolled and judged in the harshest way any 16-year-old could be.
My mother showed me all of this, pushing me to read the harsh messages aloud. I could not have been more humiliated. My father looked at me like I had committed a sin for which he was being punished.
I was devastated. I disabled my Instagram and went on a self-scrutinising mode for days. I blamed myself – for posting my photographs online, for not making my account private, for wearing a short dress, for being too excited about getting photographed, and for flaunting myself online.
I wondered if it would have been better if I had never been on social media at all, if I had not tried to be like those pretty girls on Instagram who seemed to have freedom and joy in their lives.
I started feeling uglier than ever. I lost any interest in looking at myself in the mirror, all I got reminded of every time I saw myself was shame and guilt for letting my parents down. I believed my life would slip into nothingness, that I would never be able to be happy again, nor make the right choices, or believe in self-expression.
I stopped wearing anything except loose T-shirts and baggy pants, and even stopped putting on any makeup.
With time, my parents stopped explicitly saying anything, but passively started surveilling me. They constantly called and texted me to check my whereabouts every 30 minutes.
I was stuck in a horrible state of self-chastisement and self-blame.
One evening, after my tuition class, one of my friends asked me why I had deactivated my Instagram and why I consistently looked sad.
That gentle query made me break down.
Soon, the other girls in our group, seeing me weeping, came near me, embraced me tightly.
When they heard my story, they told me not to be scared of anyone, and that I was not alone.
One of my friends told me how she had been asked to delete all her social media accounts after her father found out that she was talking to a male friend on Instagram. Another described a serious altercation with her boyfriend, who threatened to post her private photographs on Instagram because she refused to continue the relationship with him. Another friend told me how one man kept sending her unsolicited explicit images from multiple accounts until she deactivated her Instagram and started a new account.
I was one of many women who were disrespected, harassed and made to feel unsafe, all because they decided to express themselves online.
But consolation was not all they offered. They also made me realise that no one had the right to decide what I should or shouldn’t post on my personal social media accounts.
Taking a screenshot of my account and sharing it on the family WhatsApp group was a deliberate act meant to hurt me. It was that act which was wrong and shameful, not my post.
My friends made me realise that all the shame and guilt inflicted on me was a patriarchal society’s way of policing me.
Being on Instagram was one of the very first ways I was rebelling against a conservative family, which believed that a woman is free to travel, explore the world, wear western clothes and have a lot of friends, only when she was married.
Like my other female friends, I became subject to all that scrutiny because I decided to break the stereotype of an obedient, docile and innocent daughter, who did nothing without the knowledge of her parents.
After this conversation, I reactivated my Instagram. Then I asked my mother to add me to our family WhatsApp group and sent them a very firm text stating that no one has the right to intrude on my personal space or criticise me for wearing the clothes I want.
I left the group immediately after.
What followed was a day or two of silence in the group until one of my uncles shared a goofy morning message, which the group quickly filled again with the usual irrelevant advice on marriage, children and health.
My mother received a few calls from my aunts, who seemed very concerned about my behaviour. My mother entertained them, apologised on my behalf, and asked them to forgive me, for I was young and naive. My parents and I had many heated debates, which continue six years after the incident.
They have become more receptive and informed, since I tried to explain to them that I am not really against them, but the oppressive system that they are a part of.
On the internet, women are often called performative for merely conducting themselves in ways that they desire and enjoy. Comment sections fill with men asking for their rates as if they were objects on sale. Others slide into DMs and or spread defamatory stories.
However, it is not just the strange men who are capable of such violence. Those you have known as a child, who claim to be your guardians, can shame and humiliate too.
Indeed, it is even more hurtful to be slut-shamed by those who claim to be your loving friends and family. It makes you question if you can really be at home while being at home.
But I realised that I did not have to prove anything to anyone. I am no longer ashamed to express myself; I have a lively Instagram handle where I post myself in whatever dress I want. I do it for myself, not for anyone else.
I still get humiliated and challenged on Instagram, both by people I know and strangers. But I report and block my trolls, even when they are my acquaintances or relatives.
The wrong people should be made aware of the wrongs they do, so that the next time they decide to bring someone down on social media, they find it harder to escape without consequences.
Isha Kansal is assistant professor of English at Uttaranchal University and a literary curator for the Dehradun Literature Festival.
