Women sexuality in Malayalam cinema

 There was a time when I used to watch old movies in Asianet and Surya movies. Both black and white and colour. These channels used to telecast movies in the afternoon. So, when I come back from school I could watch the second half. Heroines in those movies were women in their thirties playing maidens. Fully grown with large hips and impossibly pointed tits which reminded me of ghee roasts that were served as cones at Indian coffee house. There was Sharada, the 'dukha puthri' who sacrifices, Sheela, who flutters her eyelids, and Jayabharathi who dances revealing her bulky belly. Zero figure was a shame then. Women had to be healthy and round.

And men, there were two types, the hero who sings and dances with the heroine, and the villian who conspires against the hero or rapes the heroine. The hero has to somehow stop the rape from happening. Or else the heroine will be spoiled. She will become impure, unmarriable. Her only option is either commit suicide or marry her rapist. It is from there I got the idea that women's chastity was something to be protected and guarded for the husband. So she can be delivered pure by her father to the groom, 'kanyadanam'.

Also, the assumption was that the lovers should ultimately marry. Otherwise, it is cheating. To love another man before marriage is cheating the to-be-groom. Not marrying the girl with whom a boy was in love is cheating the girl, but it won't do any harm to the to-be-wife. Only women's purity of heart matters.

At school, we used to discuss the movies we watched. My father, a movie lover, used to take us to film every month. One day, in my early teen, a friend told me the story of the movie 'Kattuchembakam' (2002), in which the heroine is raped by some people. What was unusual was that she was accepted by the hero saying that 'she is still pure to him'. How can he? That was what I thought. But kind.

During my college days, I saw Ritu (2009). A girl, working in some IT firm, I think, having many boyfriends and sleeping around. She is shunned by her goody friend who once loved her. people who might have married. The girl, in the end, leaves the high paying job and takes up community service, teaching computers to small children. She repents. It was a bad thing to go loose.

Then came the movie Sara's (2021), in which the heroine aspires to become a film director. For her, 'sex is not a promise', to get married. Sex is sex. It's a need. And fun. Free thinking career woman. Don't bind her to chastity and child-rearing. How far our women have come.