Liz Lance Beauty lies in Nepal

May 29, 2009 - June 7, 2009 Indigo Gallery Kathmandu, Nepal

Catalog

Fulbright research by Liz Lance with additional support from the United States Embassy in Nepal 1

Acknowledgments This research was completed through a fellowship from the Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States and Nepal, also known as the Fulbright Program. I thank Executive Director Peter Moran and everyone at the Nepal Fulbright Commission for their support throughout the year. I also thank Mark Larsen, Chair of the Fulbright Board, and director of the Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy in Kathmandu, for providing additional financial support for my exhibition of photography at Indigo Gallery. I also thank the honorable US Ambassador Nancy Powell for inaugurating the photo exhibition at Indigo Gallery. Finally, I thank James Giambrone, Rabindra Shakya and Kamala Didi of Indigo Gallery for their support in my exhibition.

I would like to thank the many women who shared their time and stories with me to help me better understand their ideas and consequently, how Nepali women view beauty and femininity. I give special thanks to Mishal Moktan, Indira Joshi, Neelam Shahi and Nirjala Tamrakar for opening themselves up to me.

For their help in supporting my Fulbright application, I would like to thank Neal Menschel, Pam Ross, Prakash Rimal and Krishna Bhai Pradhan. For continued language instruction in Kathmandu, I give a great thank you to my Guruji, Bala Ram Aryal. For her invaluable insight and unwavering support, I give great thanks to V. Carroll Dunham, who has helped me navigate both the challenges and successes I faced throughout my research.

A special thanks also goes out to NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Bhushan Shilpakar and Suraj Shakya of Kathmandu Photo.Circle, for providing a nurturing environment for photographers in Nepal.

For full documentation of the research, photos, multimedia videos and press coverage, please visit:

http://fulbright.lizlance.com

There are many other people who have gone out of their way to help me with my research, both in Nepal and in the U.S., and my gratitude goes out to each and every one of them.

Finally, I thank my parents Charles and Zoe Lance and my sister Anne Lance, along with the rest of my family for their support and faith in my abilities; my Nepali families, Rajman, Biju and Shriyan Bajracharya of Bubahal, Patan, and Manohari and Sikha Upadhyay of Sukedhara, Kathmandu for providing me with two homes away from home; and my many friends for helping me laugh at the absurd.

Please note that this is not an official Department of State publication, and the views and information presented within this publication are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Fulbright Program or the United States Department of State.

2

3

Fulbright Proposal For nine months, I have examined how mass media affects beauty, body image and femininity in young women in Nepal. Through my documentary research, I have sought to understand the ways mass media consumption has affected Nepal’s changing standards of beauty.

I have read and clipped countless newspaper articles and advertisements, watched television shows aimed at youth, and looked critically at every billboard, poster and label I’ve seen that either uses or targets women with their advertising. Beyond that, I have spent many, many hours with a few young women who have opened up their lives to me, to better understand how they formulate their own ideas about beauty and body image. Additionally, I have talked to many other women about their ideas regarding beauty and femininity. I have read texts and papers related to modernity and the construction of the feminine. The photo exhibition at Indigo Gallery incorporates all of that work.

Existing sociological research has provided a fascinating look at the relationship between the media and body image, which is the perception of one’s own body and attractiveness. Much of this research, completed largely in Western cultures, has shown that mass media significantly impact cultural standards of beauty, often with adverse results among adolescent girls and young women, such as depression, eating disorders and a general discontent with one’s own body. Very little of this research has been undertaken in Nepal, which, with its rise in democracy, rapidly changing media landscape and changing cultural values among youth, is ripe to be studied.

While Nepal’s media landscape has changed, so too have the ways in which Nepalis, particularly teenage and young adult, express themselves. Although female virtue in Nepal had traditionally been expressed by keeping one’s shoulders and legs covered, young Nepali women are now increasingly eschewing the traditional kurta surwal (a long tunic over baggy pants), and opting to wear more body-baring Western clothes, such as tight jeans, low-cut tops and short skirts. The Nepali institution of arranged marriage used to confine women to the roles of housewife and mother, but with ‘love’ marriages on the rise in urban areas, and more women working outside of the home, physical characteristics like fair skin and thinness have become more important, whether to find a job or a husband. Where plumpness was once historically desired as a sign of health, prosperity and fertility, and extreme thinness was a mark of poverty, young women now talk about dieting and being ‘too fat,’ and they describe others pejoratively as ‘fatties.’

While Western media has long affected Nepali culture, I argue that it is the rise of domestic mass media, with their Nepali purveyors of standards of beauty, that now affect body image in young Nepali women. I hope the work I have undertaken will have important global implications for measuring the effect of mass media in emerging democracies and cultures that do not have a colonialist past. I further hope that exhibiting my research online will make the work accessible to anyone with an internet connection and allow both Nepali and Western audiences to understand these changes among Nepali culture.

4

Mishal Moktan

5

About Nepal

About Liz Lance

Nepal, with a population of 27 million people, has been open to the west since 1951, and has had a democratic government since only 1990. Situated between India and China, with topography ranging from the Himalayas, the highest mountains in the world, to the Tarai, sea-level plains, Nepal is ethnically, ecologically and politically diverse. After a ten-year-long civil conflict that ended with a UN-monitored peace treaty in November 2006, Nepal held democratic elections in April 2008. The Maoists won those elections, and led the government until spring 2009, when Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal resigned, and the United Marxist-Leninist party formed a new coalition government led

by Madhav Kumar Nepal.

Liz Lance holds a bachelor’s degree in South Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and has completed post-baccalaureate coursework in Nepali language, literature and culture at Tribhuvan University’s Bhishwa Bhasha campus in Nepal. Liz has also completed graduate work in documentary photography at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, and was a participant at the Missouri Photo Workshop in 2007. She begins her MA in journalism at the University of Missouri in 2009.

Nepal’s economy is largely supported by foreign aid, tourism and remittances from Nepalis working abroad. The increase in consumer loans over the past few years has provided the middle class with new purchasing power, which can be seen in the proliferation of private vehicles and new motorcycles on the roads of Kathmandu and other cities, as well as brand new shopping centers and gated housing colonies.

Although television was introduced to Nepal in the early 1980s, until 2002, the majority of programming available was imported from India and the West; Nepal had only one television station, which was government owned. Now there are six private commercial television stations operating in addition to the government-owned Nepal Television and Nepal One Channel. The first private commercial FM radio station, Kantipur FM, began broadcasting in 1998, and now the radio dial is bursting with newly licensed stations.

Liz has been working as a print, radio and photojournalist for over ten years. Her written work has appeared in World Press Review Magazine, WAVE Magazine, Nepali Times, The Telluride Watch Newspaper, Shelter Magazine and Telluride Magazine, among others. Her photographs have appeared in The Maine Switch, The Onion, The Telluride Watch Newspaper, WAVE Magazine, Himal Khabar Patrika, Nepali Times, among others. As a radio journalist, Liz served as the News Director of WSUM–Madison Student Radio, was a contributing producer and reporter for KOTO-FM in Telluride, Colorado, as well as a volunteer DJ at KOTO-FM and KUSF-FM in San Francisco, California.

Liz’s professional interests include long-form multi-media documentary storytelling, incorporating audio, photo and print to tell stories that challenge the mass media status quo.

Photo by Sam Kang Li

The rise in domestic radio and television production since 1998 and 2002, respectively, has introduced a new variety of Nepali programming that is heavily influenced by Western media. These include television programs like an “American Idol” –type talent show and music video shows aimed at teenagers and young adults, and radio programs with call-in shows for love and advice, and request and dedication shows with all types of popular Western and Nepali music. Further, print media in Nepal aimed at teenagers and young adults features fashion spreads with young Nepali models wearing the latest Western styles. Additionally, the rise in the popularity and accessibility of the Internet has seen an increase in both the production and consumption of websites featuring fashion and music aimed at teenagers and young adults.

After studying for one academic year on the University of Wisconsin’s College Year in Nepal program in 1998-99, Liz returned to Nepal and lived in Kathmandu from 2001 to 2003. After an additional three-month visit in 2006, Liz began noticing vast changes in the media landscape and how young women presented themselves in public, which led to this research. Liz lived in Nepal from September 2008 through June 2009 on a Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship, during which time she completed all of the work presented within this exhibition catalog.

6

7

Pramila Timalsina and her relative Anuja Dhungel shop for new shoes at the grand opening of the Bhat Bhateni Super Store in Maharajganj in September. Supermarkets, malls and shopping centers have multiplied in Kathmandu and other cities, and consumerism has taken hold as an urban cultural value.

8

9 9

Indira Joshi performs in a video for the song “Traffic Jam,” in which she is a featured singer. “A music producer told me a I needed a package – I need to sing well, I need to speak well, and I need to be good looking, because I am in show business. But I can’t depend completely on my looks.”

More Nepali women have left behind the traditional kurta surwal and prefer Western fashions. This young woman wearing a cleavage-baring top attracts the attention of a young man on New Baneshwor Road.

10

11

Contestant Nisha Adhikari records a promotional spot on ABC Television for the Miss Nepal 2008 contest before it was canceled. Many beauty pageant contestants go on to careers in the media field.

12

13

Mountain biker Nirjala Tamrakar waits for the other female competitor to cross the finish line at the recent Nepali National Games mountain bike championship. Before committing herself full time to her racing career, Nirjala worked in various fields and participated in many beauty pageants when she was in her early 20s.

Nirjala Tamrakar wears the gold medal she won at the Nepali National Games in Chobhar. “Even if you are an athlete, you should be able to present yourself in a beautiful way, I think. Being a woman, being a lady, you should learn to look beautiful.”

Miss Nepal contestants Richa Thapa, Zenisha Moktan and Sahana Bajracharya wait for their ‘pre-judging’ question and answer sessions to begin at the International Club in Sanepa. Another contestant, Pranayana K.C., says she learned how to act feminine from the training she received through the Miss Nepal pageant. “You should sit very properly. “Even when your legs are crossed, your toes should point down. I think that adds on to how feminine you look, no matter how you’re dressed up.”

Twenty-three-year-old Mishal Moktan at home in her rented room in Baneshwor. In the five years since she moved to Kathmandu from eastern Nepal, Mishal estimates she has lost about 20 kg. “Before, when I was very fat, I did want to become thin, but I never wanted to get too skinny.”

14

15

Mishal Moktan buys vegetables one evening during load shedding in Baneshwor. She left her home in eastern Nepal when she was 18 years old and has been living alone in Kathmandu since then. She has struggled to find legitimate work and is supported in part by an American family friend.

16

17

Pramila Shahi applies ghajal at Neelam Beauty Parlor in Tansen, Palpa.

Singer Indira Joshi is joined on stage at a performance in Palpa by a young girl. “In our society, all women want to look good. Because if a girl is pretty, she’ll get a lot of love from the time she is small, because everyone will tell her how pretty she is.”

18

19

Nirjala Tamrakar participates in a dance class in Kathmandu. “I am black, I know, but I have a different kind of beauty. If I am walking from far away, people will think, ‘She is not beautiful.’

But if you look at me from a closer distance, you will find me more beautiful. That’s the kind of beauty I have.”

Mishal Moktan stands outside of her rented room with her father Buddhi Man Tamang, who has recently come to Kathmandu for an extended stay.

20

21

Young women make final preparations for the Miss Tamang contest at Rastriya Nach Ghar in Kathmandu. There has been an explosion of ethnic-based beauty contests in recent years, and while the national Miss Nepal pageant was canceled in the face of protest from a Maoist women’s group, the ethnic beauty pageants are conducted without resistance.

The eventual winner of the Miss Tamang contest, Upali Lama, has her makeup applied by a female relative before the contest begins.

According to the organizers, the Miss Tamang pageant was intended to be a celebration of Tamang culture, not a beauty contest. The contestants were required to give their introductions in Tamang language, though few of them actually speak it.

22

23

Indira Joshi fixes her hair on the set of a video shoot. “Our society is very imageconscious. People treat others based on how much money they have or if they have a nice face.�

This 30-plus-foot-long shampoo ad stood over a park adjacent to the original Bhat Bhateni Supermarket for at least six months, before it was replaced by another series of shampoo ads featuring Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra.

24

25

Indira Joshi stands in the courtyard of her family’s rented home in Maitidevi, Kathmandu. “I used to cry a lot when I was little, because I was dark. But I laugh about it now! Why did I waste so much of my time worrying about that?”

26

27

Indira Joshi performs on a video shoot for the song “Suna, suna,” in which she is a featured singer. “I don’t know, I think I’m cute. Of course, I agree with that. But every day I see beautiful women, where it’s like, ‘Wow, she is so beautiful.’ But I think I’m not that bad. But you need that for confidence, too. To build up your confidence.”

A young woman has her eyebrows threaded at Neelam Beauty Parlor in Tansen, Palpa. Many Nepali women have this painful procedure done to get rid of unwanted facial hair.

28

29

While Mishal Moktan’s classmates eat samosas, chow mein and other snacks during a break at college, Mishal only has a glass of black tea. “In my experience, no matter how many people I meet, they all want to become thin.”

30

31

Nirjala Tamrakar tattooed a tigress on her calf so that her competitors would be able to see it while she rides. She wants to be fierce and tough like a tigress.

32

33

Mishal Moktan participates in a photo shoot for the cover of a local magazine. “I have a lot more confidence than I had before, but I still am not really, really confident. But compared to before, I am.”

The studio photographer at Foto Hollywood directs a photo shoot for Miss Newa contestants Shreeja Shrestha and Kripa Maharjan.

Mishal Moktan has makeup applied during a photo shoot for a local magazine. “I’m not that satisfied with my face. Actually, I don’t look in the mirror much. If I look in the mirror too much, I get mad.”

34

35

Mishal Moktan fidgets in an English class she was taking at a private English language institute. Mishal often coordinates her nail polish with her clothes.

Mishal Moktan shows off photographs of herself during load shedding one night.

When I look at photos from before I lost a lot of weight, I think I look so much better than I do now.�

36

37

Contestant Nisha Adhikari tries on a new pair of high heels provided by the Miss Nepal 2008 pageant organizers. Many of the contestants have said they are accustomed to wearing high heels on a regular basis.

38

39

Mishal Moktan has her measurements taken for a new kurta surwal at a boutique in Bishal Bazaar. “All of the heroines now are thin and slender, and people say it’s good that they are thin and slender. There used to be chubby heroines, and they were also good. But now, they say that only really thin models and heroines look good.”

40

41

Mishal Moktan has lipstick applied for a photo shoot for a local magazine. “When I got home after the shoot, there was power and I saw myself in the mirror. My eyes looked like a ghost’s! My father said to me, “What happened to your face?”

Mishal estimates her weight now is about 40 or 41 kg, and says she has gained some weight in the past month.

42

43

The 2008 Miss Nepal contestants take a break from rehearsals. Many of the young women are working on their introductory speeches, which they could give in Nepali or English.

44

45

46

47

Copyright 2009 Liz Lance. All Rights Reserved.

All photographs and text contained in this publication are property of Liz Lance and protected under copyright laws. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, distributed or stored in a retrieval system without the permission of the author.

http://fulbright.lizlance.com

Designed by Swapnil Acharya http://www.swapnil.com.np

48