of cultural hegemony and treadmills

Yesterday I saw a woman in a long, gorgeous, peacock blue salwar kameez embellished with lovely gold beads. At the gym. She was wearing this at the university gym to work out.

The picture above depicst me wearing a red salwar kameez on Puja day in Kolkata in 2004, just for your reference.

At first I thought someone's Indian mother had tracked them down in the gym to reunite the student with a forgotten lunch, or perhaps to pass on an important message (you know, something along the lines of "if you date that American boy/become an art major, you will shame the family name and we will stop paying for your education"). When she hopped on the treadmill in the flowing crepe garment, I was overcome with a wave of confusion. Suddenly I felt embarrased for her. Then I felt embarassed for being so ethnocentric in my assumptions about "appropriate" clothes for certain spaces. Then I realized that there was a sophmore woman on the treadmill next to her working out in bright green Crocs.