{"id":29496,"date":"2026-06-15T11:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/?p=29496"},"modified":"2026-06-15T11:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:13:13","slug":"the-amazing-flabby-breasted-virgin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/the-amazing-flabby-breasted-virgin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amazing Flabby-Breasted Virgin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Six years ago, I made a play. It was performed online, during the pandemic. It was inspired by an article in Agents of Ishq<\/em> by Dr Suchitra Dalvie. She talked about her experience of reading medical textbooks in college, and finding that some of the things she was expected to learn and reproduce in exam after exam\u2026 didn\u2019t fit what she knew. Her textbook said the breasts of a virgin are \u2018pink\u2019 and \u2018perky\u2019. It said that the breasts of a woman \u2018habituated\u2019 to sex were \u2018flabby\u2019, instead. I remember reading this and thinking, gosh, how odd, my breasts have been flabby and dangly and droopy for as long as I can remember. Here I was, thinking it was a combination of size and gravity\u2026 not the status of my (dubious) virginity :). Was I wrong?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I named the play The Amazing Flabby-Breasted Virgin<\/em> and other sordid tales<\/em>. The title was based on the advertisements we see at the circus. I wanted to make fun of the textbook and its claims, which felt so obviously incorrect. I wanted to compare the textbook to the silly, exaggerated claims ads make to get an audience, while also recalling the weird and troubling history of the circus, and its display of \u2018odd\u2019 or \u2018unusual\u2019 human bodies in \u2018human zoos\u2019. I hoped we could point out the absurdity of the textbooks\u2019 claims through comedy, and prompt someone, somewhere, with more power than us, to change it. Or at least, to question it when confronted with these claims in class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never studied medicine. I dropped out of high school and home-schooled. I studied Literature in college, and spent most of the semester bunking class to make out with my girlfriend in a hallway instead. Now, I teach high school. I found my way back to the classroom I dropped out of, and teach drama in a way I hope I would have enjoyed, when I was that age. Outside of school, I make theatre. Not for a living, because there\u2019s no money in it. But to carve out the angst and anger I\u2019m left with at the end of the day, month, season, year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the audience members who came for the play said to us afterwards, \u201cI signed up because I recognised the quote in the poster as being from my forensic medicine textbook.\u201d At the time, she was a medical student in Bangalore, in her second year. Another student, a medical resident in Kerala, stayed after the show to say that when he first read the textbooks nothing seemed wrong in them, but after he started working at the hospital as a resident a lot of the things he studied seemed untrue\u2026 or incomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NCERT publishes over 50 million textbooks a year in India. Of course, that doesn\u2019t account for the millions of photocopies that do the rounds. When I was in college in Mumbai, our professors used to leave books at the campus copier and we would go pick up our copy before class, based on the reading list assigned. Nevertheless, official statistics tell us that 71% of the book industry, in India, is textbooks. We really like to study, and even if we don\u2019t, we\u2019re often made to. Textbooks are everywhere, at second-hand shops, on Xerox counters, in libraries, and now, online. They are seen as the authority on knowledge, on the one reliable place to get correct, important, in-depth information on a topic or idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A retired gynaecologist I interviewed, who went to medical college in Patna in the 1950\u2019s, described an anatomy lesson during which nobody in her all-girl class could get an answer from the teacher on how exactly babies are made. She said; \u201cOne of the girls again stood up and said, But how? How will they [the egg and the sperm] come together? Where will they meet? In a cup and saucer? The teacher said no no, that is not true\u2026 She said\u2026 I don\u2019t know \u2026 in a cup and saucer or not [sic] they meet together, in the girl. How and where, I do not know.\u201d The next day, the teacher brought a 12-year-old girl into class, who was a student at the secondary school next door. All the other students and the anatomy class teacher (who my interviewee clarified, was a young, unmarried woman herself) surrounded this girl, this heavily pregnant 12-year-old girl, and asked her with genuine curiosity, \u201cHow did it happen?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d, she said. \u201cMy stomach was coming out and my teacher told me, that is not fat, it is a baby\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are different kinds of horror in the story above. It is not a new story, or a rare one. It is no longer 1950 in Patna, and yet there is still no sexuality education curriculum in Indian schools. Sure, we learn at some point where babies come from. But rarely, if ever, from a teacher in school. Our textbooks\u2026 they have their own odd definitions of the body, of sex, of conception and \u2018virginity\u2019 and sexuality and mental health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2018 review of contemporary medical textbooks, Dr Riti Sanghvi quotes a popular textbook, still in circulation and use, that claims \u201cMany lesbians are masculine in type, possibly because of endocrine disturbances, and are indifferent towards individuals of the opposite sex. The practice is usually indulged in by women who are mental degenerates or those who suffer from nymphomania.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re a society that likes to study. We tend to work hard at school. We value education and respect teachers, for the most part. Some of that is cultural\u2026 a hangover from the casteist origins of the gurukula. We prize this thing called knowledge and hold it in really high regard. But we also live in a society that is disgusted by women, one that doesn\u2019t understand trans bodies or non-heterosexual lives. One that is very preoccupied by virginity, especially women\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An orthodox priest attended one of our shows. Afterwards, he commented, \u201cI finally understand why\u2026 many years ago\u2026 a court case acquitted a man of raping a nun I knew\u2026 because the defense argued that her breasts were too \u2018flabby\u2019 and \u2018loose\u2019 to be that of a \u2018virginal\u2019 woman\u2026\u201d If our textbooks tell us that virgins have perky breasts, and only virgins can be raped, is it any wonder then that our courts repeat the same? If our textbooks won\u2019t tell us how babies are made, we learn in other, darker, crueller ways. If our textbooks insist that lesbians are \u2018mental degenerates\u2019 or \u2018nymphomaniacs\u2019, can we really blame a doctor for treating queer women with a mix of fascination and disgust? Information is power. Misinformation has consequences, whether intentional or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of these claims are unique to India or our medico-legal education system. Some are leftovers from British law. Some are old ideas from Ayurvedic texts like the Sushruta Samhita<\/em>. Most have little basis in anatomical truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022 the Madras High Court directed the National Medical Commission (NMC) to update the textbooks based on contemporary understandings of sexuality and \u2026 actually observable, non-prejudiced anatomical design. In 2023, the NMC complied. One year later, in 2024, it rolled back all the changes it had made, reinstating older versions of the textbooks that had been decommissioned before. They offered no public explanation for their decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Information, like air, is all around us today. Online, on our phones, in a library, on a WhatsApp group, in the whispered confessions we share when we\u2019re drunk or high or just discovering both ourselves and the world, in college or high school. Before \u2018fake news\u2019 – became so easy to create and spread, there was a sense of (relative) trust and credibility in mainstream media institutions. There was (is) even greater trust in the information we learn from a textbook. After all, someone wrote and edited it, someone published it, someone else read it and decided it was important for young students to learn and know. Many people looked at and updated and revised and triple-checked this information before it was presented to us in class. Surely, they can\u2019t all be wrong? Surely, medicine, as a science, is a field of objective, not subjective truths?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my students said in class the other day, \u201cI know a source is a good source because if many websites say the same thing, it must be correct.\u201d Medical students I interviewed six years ago said to me, \u201cIf my teacher tells me something, then it must be correct. If a textbook tells me something, then it must be correct.\u201d We assume the information we see and hear and read everywhere, is fact. We trust that what we are taught, by people we think are smarter and wiser and more educated than us, surely, must be accurate. After all, we\u2019re trained to not \u2018talk back\u2019. We\u2019re told by teachers, at every age, \u201cNo backtalk allowed\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an invitation to talk back. To look again, to question, to wonder aloud. To be slightly less respectful than we are trained to be\u2026 perhaps, then, we might learn a thing or two about our bodies and the bodies of others\u2026 that resembles something more like truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Amazing Flabby-Breasted Virgin<\/em> now lives fully online at flabbybreastedvirgin.org<\/a>. You can access the play for free with the code fbvdigital@2024 (case sensitive). We are always excited to hear your thoughts, and always looking for more \u2018sordid tales\u2019. Please write to us at flabbybreastedvirgin@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n