Amtul Baweja urges normalising talking about women’s lingerie

KARACHI: It is almost a given that anything deemed personal to women will automatically be sexualized. Sometimes, those things need not be personal, but with sexual connotations attached to them, soon it becomes taboo to talk about them. From periods to women’s basic health and hygiene, from underwear to birth control, women have had to face a patriarchal society dictating what is worth a conversation for women and what is not. Content creator Amtul Baweja recently took to her Instagram to address the same.

While it may appear harmless to stop conversation around women’s issues, it abstains women from having access to basic healthcare, everyday necessities, while completely ignoring the fact that some of these things are needed only because society wants to keep women in their place. One such thing is women’s undergarments. No woman wants to wear them, but a patriarchal society will not allow her to not wear them. The same patriarchal society will also disallow them to have any conversation about undergarments.

Recently, Amtul Baweja took to her Instagram stories to give her thanks to Floraison, a local lingerie brand that sent her a PR package to review. As she reviewed their product, Baweja expressed her gratitude over the fact that women now have more options to choose from, since not many Pakistani brands for lingerie are out in the market.

The vlogger talked about how she struggles to find good quality lingeries in Karachi. During her wedding, she tried to find good lingeries but had to compromise and go for products that “were not even that great”.

“It is very difficult to find panties in Karachi,” she said. “Chaddis are a big problem for us women. And there’s no shame in talking about it. Yes, we wear chaddis, we wear jhaangiya, we wear banyaan, we wear panties. Whatever you want to call it, it’s normal. We wear it, we need them, we want them and you got them!”

She also talked about how the lingerie company initially told Baweja how reluctant most content creators were to post about Floraison’s PR package on their public profiles. While she understands that there can be certain limitations for every blogger and their content, it is also very important to normalize women talking about lingerie and underwear.

It is important for the conversation around this subject to be normalized because this way, not only will more such products be available in the market, but will also play a part in eliminating a sense of luxury attached to women’s underwear and people will finally see it as a necessity, which it is.