Damn! In Ghost Land Too, It’s Women Doing All The Work, It Appears!

A humorous take on how female ghosts in movies, as seen in Bollywood. The number of female ghosts does seems to be way over the number of male ghosts!

Recently I was watching a horror movie or rather, a horror movie was droning on in the background at home (I don’t watch horror movies). The movie was about a wronged woman and the vengeance and horror she inflicts after she is murdered.

It led me to look through some of the popular movies in the last 2-3 decades in this genre and the population of female ghosts quite seems to outnumber men, yay! It seems patriarchy is afraid of women, once they are dead. Well! that is definitely good to know. Women who are meek or easily killed when living seem to become more confident as ghosts. So even if it is a man’s world down here, the spirit world is definitely all about woman power.

Women have all the work

Why should women have to do all the work even after dying? I mean, come on give us a break here. We need to still apply make up, straighten our hair, preferably wear the Indian ghost uniform of the white saree and the  jingling anklets, even if we never wore them when we were alive. Also, scaring does not seem to be easy work at all. There is walking through walls, causing a storm and other such highly tedious work involved. There is definitely a lot of unpaid work involved here.

Where are the men?

Where do the men, that female ghosts haunt and with a lot of effort (minimum of 3 hours which is the average length of the Bollywood movie) kill, go to? Do they also turn into ghosts or do they get Moksha? If that is the case then I find the number of women stuck in nether land quite disturbing. I mean why should only the men get Moksha even if they have been complete scumbags, which is the first reason they were killed? Or do they also become ghosts? If they do become ghosts then it must be quite irritating to not be able to scare them anymore since the villains might now have similar ‘walking through walls type power.’

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Having to wear the same old dress

Then there is of course the serious possibility of getting stuck in the dress you were last wearing for all of eternity as a ghost. This of course is a very disturbing thought. What if you are wearing your torn jammies when you were wronged and transformed into a ghost? Would we be able to ask for a costume change? What if the other ghosts judge us especially since it seems to be a regular kitty party in ghost town with all the women floating around and women do dress better around other women. It is a proven fact, references are below.

No touching!

Ghost romance is a serious possibility. Women who were not romantically or sexually bold seem to become empowered once they turn into ghosts! I am not really sure if that is a good thing or a bad because it is a proven fact that ghosts can throw around things and blow gusts of wind but cannot really touch the man that they so desire. So much so that they will dance and sing around him even as their spirit selves.

Long hair is mandatory

Indian blood thirsty female ghosts always, always have long hair. Most often, straight long hair. Do women with short hair or curly hair not qualify in ghost land? Don’t they have unfinished business or are they supposed to delegate their unfinished business to the ladies with long hair only? Seriously, what happens to the girls with short hair? Are they allowed to go spook people only after they have grown their hair to acceptable ‘Indian ghost hair’ standards’?

There are too many unanswered questions here. Would definitely love your thoughts to help me understand this phenomenon better.

Images- via Giphy

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