Everyone applauds an empowered daughter, but what of the mother?

From the outside, it looked like we were living in Greta Gerwig’s seemingly perfect Barbie Land — a world run by women. But the truth was far more dour and hypocritical, much like Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dhadakne Do. My sister and I were like the young and ambitious Ayesha, who is eventually celebrated for breaking the glass ceiling, while my mom was more like Neelam, trapped in silence as her grief turned into gossip, her resilience mistaken for weakness.

My home, my personal Barbie Land

I was barely out of my teens when my father passed away, leaving behind my sister, my mum, and me in our home without a “man of the house.” While our lives were up in a toss, all of us took on roles to make sure the ship remained afloat. I got a job while I was still 19, my sister started working longer hours, and our mother became our anchor at home.

I saw our home turn into a living example of a matriarchal household, as the three of us taught each other how to deal with grief, become more independent financially and emotionally, while still leaning on each other for support during a tragic time. Each day, I glanced at my family and felt proud.

It felt like the plot of any feminist short film screened at the Sundance Festival, where an over-50-year-old widow taught herself how to change tube lights and fix the fuse board in addition to running the house, while her two young daughters took on financial responsibilities.

A few years passed, and we got used to hearing applause from society. But it was hard to ignore the unsaid backhanded overtone: ‘Wow, girls can do this?’

And when Barbie was released in 2023, I saw a few reflections of my own home in Barbie Land — until I had another realisation: the applause, the power of matriarchy, and the ‘atta-girls’ were all received by me and my sister, and not my mum, the real hero of our story.

Not Barbie, but Dil Dhadakne Do was my mother’s story

My sister and I, both young and earning, were out claiming the world as our own, as we recovered from the trauma of losing a parent. At the same time, my mother embodied how matriarchy at home cannot withstand patriarchy outside.

In Zoya Akhtar’s family drama, Dil Dhadakne Do, Neelam (played by Shefali Shah) smiles through dinner table jibes and maintains her stoic, resilient demeanour. Just as she was silenced by her circumstances, so was my mother.

The infidelity of Neelam’s husband was common knowledge, but society expected her to play the “good wife”. She raised two kids and ran the house for an absent man, yet was never celebrated for her strength. Instead, she became the punchline and the subject of gossip for her own friends.

My mother lived a similar script. For her, matriarchy came without any of the privileges. She was never seen as the woman holding the house together, but as the “poor widow”. While inside the house, my mum was evolving into an independent woman with strong opinions and an expanded worldview, outside the house, she was forced to suppress her laughter, wear dull clothes, and stay in the background during every occasion. In gatherings, where her tragedy was whispered about, she was never allowed to be anything more than the grieving widow.

While my sister and I were praised for living life on our own terms, my mother was criticised for every choice she made. One chunk of society wanted her to go back to work, make a living, and support her children financially just like her husband did. Others wanted her to continue living the part of a grieving wife, because anything else was unconventional to watch. No matter what she did, she was criticised.
The irony was impossible to ignore — those who applauded the daughters for working, paying the bills, getting past tragedy with a smile on our faces, and essentially making choices for ourselves, mocked the mother for doing the same. My mother was our Neelam — strong, dignified, enduring, and endlessly strong while raising two Ayeshas — but society refused to see her that way.

Matriarchy isn’t a Barbie-esque fairy tale

Films have always known what to do with the daughters. Modern-day Bollywood loves the image of an Ayesha Mehra who takes on patriarchy headfirst, sells her jewellery to start her business, and leaves her unloving, emotionally unsupportive husband. We root for Ayesha since the first scene in the movie, but all we feel for Neelam is pity. These stories sell empowerment, but often at the cost of forgetting the women who raised these daughters in the first place. Mothers are always written to fill the margins.

Mothers are often portrayed as sufferers, enablers, or the shadows of the “real” heroine. My mother was all three. She carried the burden of our so-called matriarchal home, yet her strength never fit the popular notion of ‘empowerment’ — not in films and certainly not in real life.

Barbie, for all its glitter and satire, revealed the real flaw in its own fantasy. Gerwig’s idea of matriarchy worked because the Barbies never had to face the real-world double standards. In Barbie Land, every woman is a president, a judge, or an astronaut — but no one is a widow. No one has to dim their own joy because society finds it unseemingly.

Our home was no Barbie dreamhouse. It was real, messy, and unfair. Matriarchy didn’t mean liberation. It lifted the daughters while strangling the mother.

Real matriarchy isn’t painted in Barbie pink. It’s written in the silences of women like my mother — the ones who hold up the house while the world looks away, too busy chanting “Down with the patriarchy” to notice her strength.

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