In one line, Akshay states that he is from Nashik, which is an “agricultural state,” and in another, he states his inability to date, or rather his incompetency to commit, stating the reason that he is from Nashik, and “ I would get 10-20 matches if I told them I live in Bombay.” He elaborates how “ If it was totally up to my parents I think they would choose the kind of person who would give them the most number of babies,” and laughs without any acknowledgement of the choice or consent of his prospective bride.Īkshay mentions how he would like “ a boy and a girl or a girl and a boy“, and how he is comfortable with either order, without mentioning the possibility of having two girls, or in fact, gender non-conforming kids. After all, in Sima aunty’s world, men need to be extended obeisance, and any woman depicting deviation should be excommunicated because prospective brides always need to “compromise”, so much so that when in a later episode, Viral states a bare minimum requirement that she wants a man with a stable, cool temperament and wants to take care of parents as an only child, Sima aunty’s reaction accompanied by the background music make Viral sound deranged. Nonetheless, Indian Matchmaking also infantilises Sima when talking about Akshay’s business-patriarchy does not excuse women who uphold it.įor Sima aunty, who flinches the second a woman is in her thirties and has not married yet, or simply wants an equal partner, this lavish praise of Akshay is hypocritical, to say the least. She mentions how eligible 38-year-old Akshay is meanwhile demeaning girls who are unwilling to marry him for they would have to shift to Nashik, leaving behind their family, friends, and career prospects, and speaks at length about how she herself had shifted for her husband in the past. While talking about Akshay, Sima aunty is all praises. It shows focussed, brilliant women as threatening, incapable of loving or being loved, and also shows clueless, subservient, societally conditioned women as the ones who deserve to get married because they are willing to “ compromise“-Sima aunty style.
Not only does the show demean and deride women, but it also demoralises and demonises them. Indian Matchmaking Season 2 was aired on August 10, and throughout the eight episodes, Sima Taparia, a marriage matchmaker from Mumbai earnestly victimises men who are bratty, pompous, and overconfident while at the same time continually criticises women who are confident and focused on not losing their identities in the process of matchmaking.
In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed.” In ‘ Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ Mulvey writes, “ The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly. This gaze, displayed in Season 2 of Indian Matchmaking on Netflix, is not the female gaze endeavouring to establish equal companionship in couples but is rather the male gaze, as elucidated upon by Laura Mulvey. There are bad portrayals of women, there are worse portrayals of women, and then there is the ‘ Sima aunty gaze‘ on women.
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