Tara Raani and I first became internet friends five years ago. The algorithm led me to Tara’s video of a stunning brown baddie dancing a stotram, a Hindu hymn, to Durga Devi, the goddess of strength and protection. A few weeks later, we met IRL on a dance floor in New York City. My memory is a little hazy, but I remember Tara was wearing a counterfeit Burberry trench coat – so chic and effortlessly cool. Fast forward, and Tara opened for Burberry at London Fashion Week in 2023.
That kind of trajectory tells you everything you need to know. Tara is a true polymath with serious range; they have gone from designing wooden tables inspired by mehndi printing blocks to starring in Grownish, and now are producing a television show satirising girlhood, or in their own words, “Sex and the City with more tattoos.” We sat down with Tara to talk about their television project Girl Monster, writing, and what it really means to decentre men.
CosmoME: What is the goal of Girl Monster?
Tara: My goal is to turn girls into monsters. What do I mean by monsters? We are incredibly powerful beings. We are angry, fierce, otherworldly. We create life, we build society, we lead, we provide. But we have been shrunken and shaped by patriarchy. So my goal is to help women live their most authentic and empowered lives, where romance is a place to connect, not to contract.
Patriarchy relies on men being a scarce resource, and all the things that we watch, all the subliminal messaging, TV shows, everything is about how men’s attention is a scarce resource. And we shape and shrink ourselves to attempt to attract men. Girl Monster shows women you don’t have to wait to be chosen. We get to choose. And when you get to choose from many men, you make better choices.
CosmoME: Can you talk about your writing practice?
Tara: Writing is ultimately the practice of thinking, and the engine of thinking is the mind. So for me, I have to keep my mind really clear. That means being well rested, well slept, well fed. It means keeping toxic people out of my life and distractions, and distractions can come in the form of dating, or even the pursuit of desirability.
When I’m writing, I cover all the mirrors in my home. They’ve been covered for the last six months, and I cover them with all of my notes, references, pages of books, pictures, because when I wake up in the morning, I don’t need to look at my body. I want to look at my mind. And that sets the tone of the day.
There are notepads all over the place, and the Notes app is always nearby. I write on all my walls, I write on all my mirrors, I write everywhere, all the time, and then I transcribe everything. I print everything out, quotes from books, whole passages, whole chapters. I’ll print that out and put it on my wall. My mind is all over my home.
CosmoME: How have your upbringings influenced you?
Tara: I wrote my first play when I was eight years old. Every year, I would write a Christmas play, cast all my cousins and myself, and we would do a performance for all the adults. I grew up doing theatre, humorous monologues and sketch comedy. Then in college, I ran this satirical news show called The Boobtube, which was basically an all-women’s SNL. Every two weeks we’d put out an episode on YouTube.
Then I moved to New York City. I had a day job, but I was also moonlighting as a writer and performer. I produced two web series, I was acting in indie projects, I was PA-ing on films, doing whatever I could possibly do to get on a set, to make things, to write, to act. And then slowly, over time, my creative career overtook my day job, and I was able to transition into being a full-time artist.
CosmoME: Who has inspired and mentored you?
Tara: I’ve been really grateful to my peers in New York City, who make art against all odds. It inspires me to have fun, to make art by myself and in community with others, and to take myself seriously as an artist. They are very disciplined.
The most important artist figure in my life, whom I don’t know personally, is Marina Abramović. She is a performance and visual artist who had her heyday in the 90s and early 2000s. What she’s taught me is to put everything on the line for my art, to be extremely disciplined, that if I don’t have my art, I will die.
As women, we are not allowed the space to sit and think. And that’s my job as a writer, to sit and think. We are supposed to think about how we look, our makeup, not eating, if this boy likes us, all this stuff that clutters our minds. So I am taking up the space to sit and think, and not cook, not perform, and not be anything to anybody. That’s my writing process.
CosmoME: What is your vision for women?
Tara: My larger goal is for women to live their most authentic lives. We’re taught that our bodies are our most valuable asset, but actually it’s our minds, or rather, it’s the connection of both. Our bodies and minds together are the most powerful thing in the world, and we are robbed of peace in either one.
We have to constantly be in the pursuit of desirability. We have to shrink our feelings, our cycles, our anger, our pain, our lust, our passion. We have to put it all in a really tiny box. We have to learn to prioritise the men in our lives, hold them up. And that is really tiring.
CosmoME: What’s next for you?
Tara: I’ve written a TV show that I’ll be pitching later this year. It’s Sex and the City with more tattoos. The show explores dating dynamics in a world where women are decentering romance and questioning gender.
Next, check out how these artists are tackling dystopia by envisioning their utopias.