“Ammi I wish I was not a girl”, whispered my 6 year old daughter. “Why?” performing unruffled I managed to pose an erudite question.

“Girls can't dance on the streets-shirtless-like Salman Khan,” she vigorously answered.

“Salman Khan is a film hero, he has to do such things, but my dear believe me, respectable and reasonable people including boys do not go shirtless on the streets and that too dancing,”

I tried to respond to her hurriedly and credibly without bothering whether my words are judgmental or violating any feminist theory or the human right of freedom of expression.

I am not sure whether I convinced my daughter or not. However, I became more abstracted and uncomfortable with the social constructs in vogue.

I wonder if I could ask somebody that:

• Who entitled men especially Pakistani/Indian men to turn their motherlands into open toilets?

• Which brand of masculinity is promoted by publicly urinating?

• Why our desi media reports theatrically about women giving births to babies in a rikshaw but never troubled to slam the most frequent graffiti about male sexual weakness?

Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen