I finally watched Fleabag. And I have thoughts. Not important in the time of corona. Not urgent in this time of crisis. Come back later, it’s cool.
It’s an odd thing, really, to be this person - a dark-skinned, Dalit Christian woman, who has lived most of her life in post-colonial India, caught in between shifting feminist politics, sitting in the middle of a pandemic, facing the risk of losing her job,
And consuming the story of a white, British woman, running a café in North London; so pretty, that she’d look gorgeous even during her mother’s funeral. I was told, by both friends and social media, that this was a very relatable show, that Fleabag was every other woman.
Fleabag is not every other woman. At the end of season 1, I knew who she was. Not just because she was a ‘posh girl’ (as the 2019 article on @guardian rightly points out) but also because I could recognize her in real life.
Not sure about you but I have befriended a few Fleabags & while they were all fun, they were disastrous to my mental health & to those around them. It takes a special kind of privilege to be all that Fleabag is & still force an audience to appreciate her vulnerability.
This might not sound cool, but quite honestly, I could not relate to any of Fleabag’s adventures. Eyeing a man in a bus and going on a date with him? When my eyes accidentally met another’s in a local passenger train in Chennai, this prick walked up to me and asked, ‘how much?’.
Having a relationship with a hot priest? After I met a not-so-hot priest in a church, during one of my bell tower explorations, he tracked me down via LinkedIn (yes, LinkedIn), found my phone number, and kept badgering me with messages and calls.
Sleeping with your best friend’s boyfriend? My friends, regardless of how sultry their beaus are, constitute a big part of my fragile support system. To hurt them so bad, over a night of what would most likely be bad, guilt-ridden sex, would be quite unforgivable.
Running a sad café and a white man turns up to offer assistance? For every job and role, I ‘network’ with several white/savarna men, and women, trying to convince them of my corporate worth, and failing, badly. Once, a hiring manager said that my story is of an ugly duckling.
Using sex to deflect the screaming void inside one’s heart? The only thing that screams in my head are stories of Dalit women, mine and others’, that are sexually exploited and rejected, when questions of legitimacy comes up. Old, but good: countercurrents.org/feminism-marga…
Whether we want to see it or not, there are unsaid, unjust rules in place that decide who gets to have good sex and who gets to be exploited; who gets to be legitimised and who doesn’t; whose bodies are worth cherishing and whose worth fetishising. Sex isn’t just sex in our world
But I agree Fleabag the show, is both genius & entertaining. I didn’t find myself using the forward option anytime. And that’s probably who Fleabag is - she is entertaining. Not as a friend, but as a character, who you can be amused by, when you’re safely sitting in your couch.
Poor, self-destructive choices that leave a trail of broken hearts and screwed up friendships are neither funny nor admirable when you’re at the receiving end of it. Having no boundaries and no awareness of how one's actions impact other people’s lives is quite terrible.
Fleabag the show, is clever for this reason. It takes an awful person, and puts a cool, ‘bad feminist’ tag to all her fuck ups. Like a rebel. Like someone who is bored of uptight, bespectacled, anti-porn feminists that talk rights and shit, while being both white and privileged.
Fleabag is a “greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, and morally bankrupt woman...” But that’s precisely why she is not every other woman. My social location, and maybe of many others, doesn’t allow me to be any of that and still be loved like Fleabag is.
