Reading Sita's Ramayana, Tindering, and Considering Feminism

I've been back on Tinder lately, and, in my swiping, I've noticed a solid portion of the women I come across are searching for a woman for their man. It's odd and often uncomfortable for me to see. It reminds me of how even today, we view women not as individuals. We, as women, are always connected to something, or should I say, someone else.

Of course, it doesn't help I've been reading Sita's Ramayana, so I'm all on a feminism kick. It's basically a graphic novel adaption of the epic poem The Ramayana but written in the perspective of Sita rather than Rama, as it is usually told.

The Ramayana is your traditional hero epic. There's lots of battles, death, and weddings. If you're interested in the traditional story, I'd recommend checking out Crash Course's mythology series, however, as Sita's Ramayana focuses on something a little different than the original epic. It's focuses, on the title implies, on Sita's expereinces. Everything is framed through what she experiences, which is relatively unsual.

As I was reading (and Tindering), I noticed there is a disconnect between the art and text in Sita Ramayana. The text looks like it ahs been slapped on to the art like a kindergartner going rogue with a glue stick and some magazine cut outs (see above panels from the book up). They don't match.

Moyna Chitrakar, who did all the art for the book modled their art style after traditional Indian art. The faces are stylized, leaning more on the side of language than reality in comic critic Scott McCloud's pyramid of pictorial vocabulary. This simply means, we know it's a face because it's got eyes and a nose and a mouth  but it doesn't look like something you'd see in real life. You can, though, for sure tell it's a face.

This lack of realism coupled with bright outrageous colors reminds me that the world in which this story takes place is not my reality. It's one of gods and goddesses, fantastical beasts and faraway lands. The almost type writer styled text, however, keeps me grounded and reminds me I'm reading it in this world, which is important cause even though Sita is a goddess, she's still a woman and at the base, her story is one of many women.

Two dudes fought over her, so she told them both to shove off and did her own thing. Her words are so different than the traditional Indian artwork to show that she is bucking tradition and taking this traditional story in her own hands. It is her story told through her voice. She refuses to allow anyone to take it from her.

I admire Sita for that in this book. Reading this graphic novel makes me want to message all the unicorn hunters I keep running into on Tinder and ask them their story, not the story of how they met their husbands and boyfriends, but their own story as women. It makes me want to tell my own story as well. Sita's Ramayan may not have begun as a feminist retelling of an a traditional story, but I think it's become one, at least for me.