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Viral Video on Women's Choices Is Stirring Up Controversy in India

Deepika

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Have you seen this video everyone’s talking about—something called My Choice?” my 15-year-old son asked me the other day. Yes, I replied. “It says it’s OK to have sex outside marriage!” It talks about many other things, I said, plus there are other issues... Where did you see it, I asked cautiously. “Some friends posted it on Facebook. Do you agree with what it says?” Well, the messages need to be discussed in a more nuanced manner; perhaps we can… I trailed off as my son, the restless teenager, shrugged and went back to the cricket game on television. I made a note to sit down with him and have a talk about the video later.

We were discussing My Choice, a video by Vogue India as part of Vogue Empower, a women’s empowerment initiative launched last year.

The video features Bollywood diva Deepika Padukone, along with other women, mostly celebrities from the entertainment and fashion sector, and a handful of “regular” women in split-second frames asserting their right to make choices—political, sexual, and economic.

Shot in black and white and with foot-tapping music in the background, it has Padukone mouthing some pretty bold lines about women’s agency over their bodies: “My choice to marry, or not to marry; to have sex before marriage, to have sex outside of marriage, or not to have sex. My choice to lust temporarily or to love forever. My choice to love a man, or a woman, or both. Remember, you are my choice, I’m not your privilege. My choice to come home when I want… My choice to have your baby or not, to pick you from seven billion choices or not. So don’t get cocky. … My choices are like my fingerprints; they make me unique.”

#MyChoice started trending on Twitter. Since it went online, the video has been viewed more than four million times. It has been applauded, criticized, and lampooned in equal measure.

“This is not a video I’d consider important for my daughter,” says Sushila Mendonca, an HIV/AIDS and reproductive health trainer living in Goa. “She already understands that her life in this country is privileged considering her background, access to education, and exposure to various kinds of thoughts. Her life and activities are not bound by gender stereotypes.”

But Delhi-based 30-something single woman Aditi SenGupta feels that although the video is marred by superficiality and an overdose of glamour, there were several points that resonated: “Even the choice of partners from any gender—well said!” SenGupta likes the fact that the video questions the symbols of marriage and womanhood. “It says a bindi is just a bindi, not a testimonial to your character or protection from assault. This is very relevant to the times we are living in, where any assault on a woman results in an analysis of her clothes, haircut, background, etc.”

In an op-ed, Akhil Kumar, senior editor at Youth Ki Awaaz, a platform for youth-led news and opinion, wrote that he found the video refreshingly different from the current narratives on women’s issues. “It boldly asserts a woman’s agency, and does so not in a tone that ‘requests’ the oppressor to acknowledge it, but emphatically affirms/declares that a woman’s choices are her own and she will live by it.”

The video’s protagonist, Padukone, is perceived by many youngsters as someone who stands up for issues. She had stood up to leading English newspaper Times Of India when it ran a photo with a crude caption highlighting her cleavage. "YES! I am a Woman. I have breasts and a cleavage. You got a problem!!??" she had lashed back on Twitter.

But critics of the video weren’t impressed, saying they found it ironic that a women’s empowerment message should come from someone working in Bollywood, which has had a long history of sexualizing women. News website Quartz India said the video was "hypocritical," pointing out that Vogue and Padukone have a lot in common: “They're both from an industry that is based on fetishizing, objectifying and reinforcing sexist standards of beauty on women." The Ladies Finger, a contemporary feminist website, took the criticism to another level, asking why the video was written, directed, and produced by men—“because we are running out of women writers and filmmakers, right?”

TED fellow and prolific blogger Sanjukta Basu, who runs a social media and communication consultancy, expressed frustration with the widespread feminist criticism of the video. “This just kills me,” she wrote. “They [feminists] do it every fucking time there is someone popular making a point about feminism. Whether it’s a popular actor making a TV show or a telecom company creating a TV ad. These scholars expect a one minute video to address all nuances of feminism.”  

The different reactions reflect the deep divisions in Indian society about what women’s freedom means. There are large numbers of of women in urban areas, with education and jobs under their belt, who are straining at the leash wanting to break free of patriarchal norms. Research done by the Indian travel industry has found that an increasing number of women are choosing to travel alone, and many women-only tour operators have sprung up to cater to them. Women in India are also increasingly choosing to stay single or get married later than is expected of them.

India’s politicians and decision makers seem woefully out of touch, as illustrated by the outrageously misogynistic opinions that are printed in newspapers every other day. A minister created a furor when he said sindoor (the vermillion dot on the forehead of married Hindu women, which is also becoming outdated) will protect women from rape. The External Affairs minister of India called journalists “presstitutes,” playing on the word prostitutes.

A woman sarpanch in Chhattisgarh recently lost her life for defying a Hindu tradition and lighting the funeral pyre of her mother. She was killed by her elder brother for denying a son his right. “In a country like ours we need to think of much larger problems women are facing,” says Mendonca.”Women are given less importance than cows. Perhaps we need to face the reality of a larger group of women and not just of a few.”

Tanya Sirohi, digital editor of a leading travel magazine, says she belongs to the privileged few, and has faced biased attitudes, “but these are not even a dot on the paper that lists far more important issues faced by Indian women.” Yet Sirohi, who recently commissioned a feature on solo women travelers, echoes the thoughts of many when she says My Choice embodies a change, a certain shift that's beginning to happen. “I wish for many more such efforts. Whatever it takes to correct our attitudes, and address things that matter and should matter.”

The video is now smaller than the debate it has started, and the discussion around it is as much about class as it is about gender. The divide between rich and poor women in India is too vast for Vogue to address in a slickly packaged short. When we talk about gender in this country, we also have to talk of class.

Meanwhile, I am still making notes for the talk with son—no, the video isn’t anti-men or pro-extramarital affairs; yes, men do enjoy privileges not available to women, yet both men and women are victims of patriarchy and notions of masculinity …. so much to cover. I watch the video again and wonder if the self-purported good intentions of the makers may have backfired. The video may have carried more weight if the message had been set against a wider range of women. But then, this is a corporate social responsibility exercise by Vogue, and perhaps we are asking for too much from a fashion magazine with size-zero models on every page.



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