In May 2015, ELLE was asking questions few were willing to tackle. Gender was often spoken about in hushed tones, pronouns were not addressed and identities were strait-jacketed. It was then that Elle explored conversations around gender.
What if your gender didn’t matter? Not its stereotypes. Nor its stigmas. None of the shoulds or should-nots. Not even its clothes. Just the freedom to be whoever you choose to be.
It is a question we’ve been asking ourselves for some time now at ELLE. And the sheer avalanche of possibilities a world free of gender roles would allow has us bewildered. Imagine walking down a street at 2 am and forgetting to be afraid. Or dating a man with a penchant for swishing skirts. Imagine slender not being equal to weak, or swarthy not meaning lesbian. Equal pay, equal opportunity, equal rights. More clothes, more compassion. Imagine unabashedly bawling your eyes out, boy or girl, in a theatre full of people when the sad part comes.
But first, we had to confront our own prejudices — the language of he and she lives in the most liberated, forward-thinking and defiant among us. We decided to consciously dream of such a free world. Our first attempt was an installation at the FOCUS Photography Festival in 2015 in Mumbai, featuring real people, who were willing and ready to dream with us. With their help, we prodded the boundaries of what is gender-appropriate and what is not, and questioned why these tags should exist at all.
ISHAAN HARLHARAN, 28
ILLUSTRATOR
RADHIKA NAIR, 30
MODEL
“Bodies are different, but minds are not”
BANRAP BORLANG, 33
TELEMARKETING PROFESSIONAL
JIMMY GRANGER, 32
PHOTOGRAPHER & FILM-MAKER
RIA ANA SEJPAL, 31
ENTREPRENEUR & MODEL
SARVESH MAMGAIN, 28
SHOE DESIGNER
“My mom bought me Barbies even though I was a boy”
TSUNDUE PHUNKHANG, 36
VIDEOGRAPHER
HIMANSHU SINGH, 33
MODEL & THEATRE ACTOR
“Bowie wasn’t kidding when he became Ziggy Stardust, you know?”
D. MEENU, 28
MODEL
SHARMISTHA RAY, 43
ARTIST
“Gender is not merely a biological construct or social binary: it’s a powerful personal expression, at once privately maintained and publicly performed”
ELTON STEVE VESSOAKER, 38
MAKEUP ARTIST & HAIRSTYLIST
JUSTINE RAE MELLOCAST, 24
HAIRSTYLIST & ENTREPRENEUR
NIKHIL D, 35
STYLIST & DESIGN CONSULTANT
“No amazing person I’ve met can be easily labelled”
GITANJALI DANG, 41
WRITER & ART CURATOR
“The notion of a fixed identity is rubbish”
NEVILLE BHANDARA, 33
WRITER
“I know girls who like to wear tuxedos and boys who like to wear heels”
ABHIJIT SALPREM, 33
FASHION PERSONALITY
Photographs Bikramjit Bose; Styling Nidhi Jacob, Alisha Netalkar, Arushi Parakh; Make-up and Hair Sandhya Shekar, Mehul Sakhrani
ASSISTED BY: NEHA SALVI; PRODUCTION: PARUL MENEZES
