Deepika Looks Hot In Besharam Rang But Was All That Necessary?

I sat with my morning ritualistic cuppa and scanned through my phone like any other day. I was inundated by the deluge of notifications on SRK’s upcoming movie, Pathan.

So far so good, and I am a fan of his since DDLJ days.

But what irked me was the posters and video snippets across social media platforms focussed less on the man himself (and the film is based on his character!!) even though he is back after a long hiatus! Whereas at the vortex of it all was a svelte Deepika in minimalistic clothing that left little to the imagination.

I feel this is nothing but an objectification of a woman to hard sell a product… in this case the film.

Getting back to ground realities, ordinary women despite their levels of education or backgrounds are often subject to leers and eve teasing, using the very same songs and lyrics shown up on the screen. There is not a single woman out there who hasn’t been in the eye of the storm of such derogatory passes at some time in her life.

Right from the time lyrics like ‘choli ke peeche kya hai…’ to ‘sexy sexy sexy mujhe log bole’ in the early 90s to the surge of revolting lyrics and tunes passed in the name of compositions in the past decade, it’s getting worse.

The general film-crazy public often looks up to their favorite actor-actress and so the onus of putting forth a trustworthy image lies on them as well. One may question, why should it matter?

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It’s everywhere; you can’t escape social media!

Of course, it does. We can’t even shut off the cringeworthy stuff because of the social media presence. In fact, of late we can’t even differentiate if the song is an item number or a random one in the movie. There has been a spate of such item songs which have no place in the story but appear forcefully inserted.

My question remains: Why should an actor of Deepika’s caliber resort to such measures to prove herself? Why should women be treated as objects and subject to appalling trolls? Why should the choreography or the hook steps have lewd pelvic or thoracic thrusts? Is soft porn essential to sell a story? There is a lot of it available on the internet for the same…  as far as pornography is concerned there are restrictions and legalities in place for a reason.

We may consider ourselves modern, but modernization isn’t synonymous with complete or partial nudity. A majority of the commoners, where women still have to hide that sanitary pad from the males in their homes, still don’t have the emotional maturity to handle such content…period.

Back to the movie in question, It’s going to take long before we accept such aspects as normal phenomena. That a woman baring it all is the same as a man doing so. And that neither will be subject to critical trolling nor would it trickle down to the general public getting directly ‘motivated’….

Till then I hope better sense prevails. Let content be king and the USP of a movie and not all skin show as it is now… unless it’s an adult movie (Maybe…)

I know I may face flack for my take, but feminism for me is women’s liberation in the true sense of the word where she is safe in the world outside and isn’t the upholder of virtue at home; a world where she is not humiliated for her choices and a world where gender bias doesn’t stand in the way of her success.

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