First Female Indian Idol

I love this and just had to share. The star of the video below is Sourabhee Debbarma, winner of Indian Idol '09. She's twenty-four, the first female to win Indian Idol, and according to her wiki entry, she is of Twipra descent (the indigenous people of the Tripura region).

It's not until I actually see these that I realize how hungry I am for images like this, and also this--where brown people are not just in the picture to educate about race/racism, to be studied, to be tokens, or as a splash of colour in an otherwise all-white landscape*. I love seeing this young woman have her spotlight on a show that dominates the cultural airwaves the world over, and in a context where she can just BE.

She's beautiful, isn't she? Though if she'd grown up with someone like my dad, she'd have heard this her whole life: "EAT. Or we're going to have to weigh you down on windy days. Eat MORE. [headshake] You don't eat enough..."

*I know Indians have their own tokens and "to-be-studied" groups--plenty of bigotry, racism, and downright supremacy abounds on the subcontinent. No arguments there. However, this post is within the context of North American media and images - and PoC within those frameworks.