Dear Punjabi Songs, Why Can’t You Show More Financially Independent Women?

Punjabi pop songs show men as strong and powerful individuals, and women as gold diggers beseeching their men for the goodies!

Punjabi pop songs show men as strong and powerful individuals, and women as gold diggers beseeching their men for the goodies!

She is educated, she is fashionable, she comes from a good family…but she is not financially independent. She always demands luxury from her man. She either begs or dares him to buy in order to win her heart, even if he refuses. I am talking about none other than the women shown in Punjabi pop songs.

Punjabi pop songs are no different from Bollywood songs of the ’80s and the ’90s. The Punjabi hero also stalks, teases and objectifies women. But Punjabi songs have a new addition to all this which is the demands for luxury brands, cars and accessories by the girl to her man.

As she is either an immature ‘Papa ki pari’ who needs to be taken care of or a gold digger who just wants luxuries in the name of love. She only relies on and expects materialistic things from her partner to keep herself happy. Loyalty, compassion and understanding stand nowhere in front of big brands. From a ‘mehenga lehenga’ to jutti, and from Gucci to Jaguar, the woman wants them all but from her man’s money.

The ‘strong man’ versus the ‘gold digger’

On the other hand, the man is shown as an individual who is earning or has a lot of money to buy all the luxuries of life such as fancy cars and branded clothes.

He is portrayed as a strong, independent and powerful person who acts as a magnet to gold diggers. In almost every song, he shows ‘attitude’ and neglects his girl’s demand. But after countless pleas from the woman, he buys her what she wanted.

In reality, this is absolutely not the scenario, with urban women being as educated and independent as the men are. But why do the Punjabi pop numbers refuse to acknowledge this? This is solely because these songs want to attract the male gaze by making the men feel superior to the women and influence them that ‘their girl’ has to be always dependent on them and has no financial independence of her own. This brings the songs more popularity and views. But what if the roles were reversed and the woman bought luxuries for her man? This will hurt our so-called educated yet bigoted youth and will not be liked by the masses.

But there is an exception to this culture as in the song Shopping, where the woman pulls out her own credit card to pay for what she bought, though after making countless requests to her man. So things are changing, though rarely and slowly and there might yet be a day where we will see the financial independence of women who show us that they can buy any jutti or lehenga or Prada or Gucci on their own.

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Top image is a still from the Punjabi pop song ‘Prada’

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