If any of you loyal readers were around during my recent(ish) trips to India for work (my old job), you may remember me talking about watching a lot of TV. There were lots of American shows on cable there, including Friends, Will and Grace, Dharma and Greg, The Hogan Family, Caroline in the City, etc. A lot of the shows were sitcoms, although there were a couple of dramas thrown in there as well. There were also American movies in the cinema and on TV. I always wondered how this was affecting Indians, who generally lead quite different lives than Americans, especially the ones you see on TV. Well, this article mentions that it's affecting women a lot.

I always thought it strange that most of the women I knew there were still fairly conservative, yet women's magazines like Cosmopolitan India were telling girls to sleep around, buy cars, and get good jobs. Other women's magazines, like Femina, seemed to be geared more toward mothers and housewives, kind of like Good Housekeeping or Ladies Home Journal.

Side note: I purchased a US Cosmo to read on the plane going over for one of my trips. I'm usually not a Cosmo reader, but I wanted something light and fluffy for the plane. A month or two later, I bought an Indian Cosmo out of curiosity. In one of their articles where they get guys' opinions on how girls should dress, or have sex, or whatever, some of the responses sounded familiar. Turns out they were taken from the American magazine, but the guys' names were changed to Satish, Srinivas, Jaideep, or whatever. So much for getting honest opinions from your countrymen! I wonder how this misleads girls there - then they get into a relationship and the guys' views are much more conservative or whatever.

Anyway, I found the article an interesting read. Ah, America, spreading your influence like a giant slab of butter.