On March 8th every year, I remember one of the finest holidays in Yugoslavia, the renowned 'Dan Žena' or, yes you've guessed it, Women's Day. Not just for the nostalgia of how my father and I conspired to buy flowers for both my sister and my mother, but also the praise and admiration for all women that we were taught at school - women as workers, partners, lovers, mothers and our own female progeny. And despite the obligatory cynicism of our age towards giving flowers to females on a given day (invoking images of the romanticised/sexualised passive recipient of male attention?), I do still maintain it is, as far as institutionalised celebrations go, one of the more respectable and inclusive ones, especially compared to the awkwardly normative 'Mothers' Day', which presumably only celebrates women's biological ability to give birth and raise children.
Unfortunately, a cursory examination of what "8th March" now means to the Youtube-ing community of exYugoslavia, one is faced with a barrage of roses, hearts and romantic music, which is only sometimes interrupted with a more solemn message dealing with women's rights and their contribution to the revolutionary and national-liberation movement in Yugoslavia, mostly using grainy archival footage. It is in a way not surprising that the creeping encroachment of a globalised vocabulary, be it visual or verbal, has colonised this particular occasion. What is of greater interest it how the celebration has been imbued with a meaning akin to an Oedipal hybrid of Valentine's and Mother's Day, where men buy roses both to their girlfriends and mothers in an acknowledgment of the competing dyads of woman-man and mother-son. And just to make this issue clear, I think it is a fantastic idea that far exceeds the original intentions of Clara Zetkin and the Socialist Second International.
Women's Day also reminds me of another issue with which I have been grappling, that of the lack of physical political action, or rather the cynicism towards any engaged physicality, be it violent or non-violent. Instead, political activism seems to consist of 'signing' a petition on Avaaz.org (not sure what they achieve, apart from an instantanous relief of one's guilt over inaction, akin to pre-Reformation indulgences). The only physicality that one observes on 8th March 2012 are the queues in front of H&M stores in anticipation of the Marni collection, which in all fairness I considered joining. I now have it on good authority that the wait would have been in vain and would cause considerable disappointement, due to the general bad quality of material used. So? What remains on this 8th March? Some work, some learning, and most of all, a big thank you to all the women in my life.