Tied up in Knots

Image: Gabe Popa

Last week Kim Kardashian launched project Break the Internet. Her weapon of choice? Butt. Followed by nipples and a hint of vulva. It is not the first time we have seen Kim's naked body but it is the first time we have been quite so incensed by it. Too shiny! She's a mother! Oh my goodness that black sequin dress looks like a bin bag! Is that butt even real? I can't believe she has no pubic hair. Other important comments were made, such as the fact these nude photos were different because it's perhaps the first time we have seen this woman smile or look like she is having any fun. Which was nice. There was also however the problem that this image of Kim's buttocks was seemingly deemed more acceptable than, for example, Nicki Minaj's - why is one butt decent and the other indecent? It's also interesting that when nude images of famous women were stolen we all liked to take a sneaky peek but for some reason a woman consensually posing nude is peculiarly iffy. However let us not forget that the internet did not break, we had access to the usual plethora of information and we chose to highlight a woman's nude photoshoot over a the deaths of women in a sterilisation camp in India.  

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Now a naked butt is a naked butt, we all might like to catch a glimpse of a particularly intriguing one - you know an intriguing butt when you see one, either so small you have seen bigger hamsters or so large you wonder if padding is involved - either way you can't quite take your eyes off it. We are only human and we have our curiosity. So really you would think the general public's curiosity might lead it to be interested in a story that involves rat poison and the ingesting of it through tainted antibiotics. Come on, everybody is talking about antibiotics right?

Well, yes but only with regards to either demanding a GP furnish a coughing child with the drugs or worrying about our overuse and abuse of the former medical miracle. Take a look at your social media now. Have a scroll. Were I the type I'd happily bet a small amount of change that someone has tweeted or posted a status about antibiotics and them or their child. But not about Chhattisgarh. 

It's not just that the antibiotics used in this sterilisation camp were perhaps tainted and/or out of date. Or than poor hygiene may have contributed to the deaths of 15 or so women. Nor the procedure of a tubectomy itself. But our disregard for the women involved. Perhaps if they were having butt implants we'd care. 

a rich Indian woman is unlikely to go for the incentive of 1,400 rupees that comes with sterilisation

Rather than make cheap or free contraception available to men and women in this area sterilisation (of the women here) is the option offered for those who do not wish to have more children - or cannot afford more children. A tubectomy involves either clamping or severing the fallopian tubes (lady's choice I suppose) meaning that an egg can no longer reach the uterus. 

This sterilisation programme is designed to help stem the rise in India's population. Though a rich Indian woman is unlikely to go for the incentive of 1,400 rupees that comes with sterilisation. According to Deborah Doane: "Women aren't given other options for birth control. The contraceptive pill is considered taboo, while condoms are shunned. Male sterilisation rates are a fraction of those of women. Of the almost 50% of couples who practice birth control in India, 75% do so through female sterilisation, undoubtedly because women have few choices, if any, over their bodies."

Women are now claiming to have been slapped by the doctors who work in the sterilisation clinic in question. They are questioning the standard of medical treatment they have received and on Friday police in India arrested the head of a local drug manufacturing company. 

If we want to use women's bodies to 'break the internet' then might I suggest we use the bodies of the 15 women who have died in Chhattisgarh.

Squeamish Kate