It seems
that the word Aunty has become a bit of a bad word in recent times. Being called
an Aunty is offensive because it implies you are old and old-fashioned, in a
world where being young an attractive is everything. Auntie’s get grouped like
a pack of wolves, or hyena's – upholding toxic traditions and the patriarchy.
They are made to look like a bunch of sneering, gossiping, judgemental women.
I'm seeing this lazy labelling more and more and it's bothering me for two
reasons.
Firstly,
the group of women we are talking about are often the most vulnerable in
society. Women in their 40's to 60's, often with difficulty speaking English,
no job or income, dependent on their families.
They are usually immigrants who have struggled through being uprooted, facing
poverty and isolation to build communities and families around them. They often
still have poor health outcomes (which we satirise as the Auntie’s talking
about their various illnesses and complaints, or hypochondria). They are often
still the most vulnerable to racism or hate crimes due to their faith or
race. They have spent a lifetime caring
for others and then find themselves looking forward to the prospect of caring for
elderly parents and in-laws whilst not getting the support from their children they
had hoped for.
Secondly,
I think young people forget the foundations they are standing on. I was the
same. I used to wonder what on earth my
parents did with their lives, why they didn't fight back against racism, why
they put up with so much unfairness. Until I started to see what they did do.
Keep our faith and culture alive, build our places of worship, work hard and
make sacrifices so that we could have the best chances at education and
life. We dismiss it because they weren't
all on Instagram shouting about it, they did it quietly and without
thanks. My generation of newly-minted
Auntie's built on this, we had jobs, money and a voice. We knew how the system worked and we have
tried to use it to benefit our children and our communities.
I have to
admit, the first time a grown person called me an Aunty (in my thirties) I was
offended. After all he was balding with a big belly and I looked young for my
age (I think I used to get it because of my hijab). A few years later, in my late thirties, I
started to get used to being called Aunty by people in their twenties and took
it as both a sign of respect and their short-sightedness, after all to many
young people thirty is the limit to do anything and forty is as old as death.
There are
two things that come from this for me. The first is the need to advocate for
our mothers and auntie's not belittle them.
I believe part of the reason why Asian women of a certain age have poor
health outcomes is that they are not taken seriously by health professionals,
who will try to send them away with advice to take a paracetamol instead of
looking into their problems seriously until they become serious. I have seen
this time and again.
The
second is to own our power as the new generation of older South Asian women,
both to uphold our values where they are beneficial (e.g. faith and family) and
to challenge where they are not (racism, casteism, misogyny). In a culture that
mourns the birth of a daughter, look everyone in the eye and celebrate loudly.
Where we are seeing young people being forced into marriage or religion being
used to harm others – take people to task. Stick up for our young women, but
hold them to account also when they take all of their education and opportunity
and decide to focus on petty drama, make-up and materialism instead of all of
the good they could do.
Where we
see bad behaviours, those things that cause us to label people Aunties, don't
lump women under one moniker as if to excuse, but call out the individual
behaviours. Also, see them for what they often are: the actions of women who
are bitter or isolated, lacking in self-respect or self-hating to the point
they have bought into the most toxic parts of their cultures.
This
doesn't give young women a free pass either to misbehave (read be
disrespectful, lazy or rude) and then expect older women to defend them when
they are called out on it.
For now,
I am taking up the Aunty label with a view to owning and re-defining it. As the
women you go to for help, the ones that can take care of their communities,
lead their young folk and stand up to and up for others. One of the people who has really inspired me
to own the word Aunty is The Village Aunty who hangs out on Twitter and talk
about interesting stuff, you might want to check her out.
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