SRK and the realities of female fandom
Fandom was a way for Indian women to express desire for a man who departed from stifling tradition. As women in a patriarchy, it was also an avenue for these women to assert their financial independence
From the nightclubs of Delhi to the villages of Uttar Pradesh, drawing on more than a decade of data and conversations, I have followed the jobs and journeys of a diverse group of Indian women. They are divided by class and religion, but united in their quest for economic independence, love, and fandom for actor Shah Rukh Khan (SRK). By listening to female fans talk about Khan, I came to understand their socio-economic struggles better. How did SRK fandom reveal the realities of these women?
First, fandom is an economic activity. To follow the work of an artiste requires money, time, technology and easy access to markets. To be a fan entails spending disposable income in a country where the majority of the population lives in economic precarity. In India, men have more resources to pay for the content they want to see, given the country reports one of the lowest employment rates for women in the world.
Female fans struggled to find free time away from domestic work to watch a film. Those from low-income communities fought their families to buy televisions and mobile phones, and tackled censure for cruising images of their favourite actor. Cinema halls were considered unsafe masculine spaces in small towns. Women often felt guilty about spending money exclusively for their own pleasure. For fangirls who earned an income, successfully watching a film, procuring a poster or being able to binge on SRK’s songs with their own money became a subtle way for them to flex their economic muscle. Fandom was an avenue for these women to assert their growing financial independence.
Second, fandom allowed women to use Khan as an idealised role model to critique dominant modes of masculinity surrounding them. Fangirling and mawkishly praising Khan’s iconography can seem cringeworthy to sensible people who may not gush at a movie star. Most anglicised upper-class Indians see Hindi film icons merely as entertainment for the masses. But for the women featured in my book, fandom was a way for them to express desire for a man who departed from stifling tradition.
SRK’s films and songs embodied their aspirations for kinder and more vulnerable masculinity in Indian men. So much so, that they ignored the films where his characters harmed women. When fangirls from conservative families express admiration for Khan and how he looks, they trespass social norms where a “good woman” is expected to remain silent about men and her sexual desires. Underneath the disgust and embarrassment that many Indians feel when women gush over Khan is a deep-seated fear of the female voice and sexual agency.
Third, over the years, I came to realise that Khan’s images offered smiles and respite when the women I interviewed felt exhausted by fighting patriarchal norms in their everyday lives. All talk of his songs and scenes would trigger rich descriptions of how office brocodes, families and men withheld recognition and love for women who worked outside the home. Khan became incidental to many of these interviews I conducted.
My aim was to tell a story about Indian womanhood, not his stardom. The remarkable power of SRK as an icon lies in how it enabled communication among a group of women who have very little in common with each other. Fandom became a safe entry point to traverse difficult conversations on men, money and misogyny.
In telling me when and why they turned to SRK, the women I interviewed offered numerous examples of how Indian society taxed them emotionally for trying to earn an independent income. Over the past two decades, for reasons I summarise in my just-released book, Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and the Search for Intimacy and Independence, the Indian economy has steadily pushed women out of jobs into full-time caregiving roles. Part of the problem is technocratic: The stuff of economic growth, infrastructure, and policy. But as I learned from the stories that fandom allowed women to tell, a larger problem is the nuisance and loneliness women experience when they seek to live life on their own terms.
Economists call these “hidden taxes”. These taxes sustain women’s economic and domestic enslavement without the kind of mass outrage triggered by innocuous advertisements. Women realise that they will endure fewer complaints and chik-chik if they toe the patriarchal line and quit fulltime jobs. Among the urban elite, where female employment rates are the lowest, men’s economic dominance hides beneath the glossy combination of sanskari values, a few scattered examples of exceptional female leaders and westernised mores.
Working women, across classes, were lonely in managing housework.
They were forever hustling and bargaining for simple freedoms. Several felt their professional achievements were minimised by loved ones. Each woman was constantly seeking permission to do what she would like to – rest, work or watch movies. I heard countless stories of how men did not wish to marry career women. I also heard teary-eyed stories of how families would only love women who conformed to traditional matrimony and motherhood. Some of the women I followed confessed that they would receive more love if they gave up on their ambitions outside the home.
For them, SRK’s romantic persona, with its open arms and whole-hearted appreciation for women, came to represent an impossible fantasy. One where women could expect reciprocity and unconditional love from men and society. And as real life disappointed, Khan gained more glory.