Mr Iglesias? No thanks. Mr Darcy? Yes Please!

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when most of my friends were crushing over Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin and swooning with love-struck eyes to Rhythm Divine and Uno Dos Tres,  I was lost in the world of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott. Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Women. I was enamored by their heroines, especially Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice and Jo from Little Women. These were not your typical heroines that could be labelled as demure or as ‘damsels in distress’. No. These were young women with a mind of their own and the courage to speak their mind whether or not people around them approved of what they said and how they said it. 

So when my friends would go all pink and blush talking about Enrique and Ricky Martin, I would inwardly cringe because I would wonder how they  could be so blown by the male charm that seemed to instantly captivate them but failed to work on me. I wondered if something was actually wrong with me. What was going on? But I didn’t dwell on it for too long because I had my books to reassure me. 

Elizabeth and Joe were my role models; they did not pander to the male attention that easily. In fact, they became almost unattainable to the men around them because of their wit and intelligence. 

So when my friends burnt CD after CD of Enrique songs and Ricky Martin hit albums, I read and read some more. Elizabeth’s sarcasm when she judged Mr. Darcy or Jo’s  bursts of anger when she was misunderstood taught me something at a very young age. They both taught me to have an opinion, to be able to express that opinion, and to own it completely rather than blindly succumbing to peer pressure and baseless societal norms.

So today, when I saw my social media feeds chock-a-block with Enrique Iglesias’s concert in Mumbai and updates from all my millennial friends reliving their glory years, I knew what I had to do. 

I quietly reached out to my well-worn copies of Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, safe in the knowledge that it is okay to be different, that it is okay to be you in a world that is trying to force you to conform. It takes courage to be able to stand in a room full of judgy 15 year olds and declare that you prefer Mr Darcy over Mr Iglesias. Try it, it’s liberating. It was for me.