Little had the controversy behind Deepika Padukone’s alleged ‘cleavage’ settled when she has again stormed the columns with her video that is doing more than its fair share of rounds with the name: Deepika Padukone – “My Choice”, directed by Homi Adajania, who has formerly directed films like Finding Fanny (rings a bell ?) and Cocktail. Although it is just another video in the long list of them being posted on YouTube every day without any purpose whatsoever, the controversial matter that it contains is another ‘Yay’ moment for us bloggers to slam down our opinions and try to get some views. What? Was that too direct? At least I am being honest with it unlike this megastar who is trying to become a social icon with the sole motive of fostering her own agenda behind it; the agenda that is releasing on *drumroll* the 8th of May this year.
The last time Deepika reacted to an year old post about her, her film “Finding Fanny” was on the cards. Although TOI was criticized for pointing this out in its response to Deepika’s reaction, the truth wasn’t any far from it. How about the probability of such crowd-gathering stints, one after the other, right before the release of her two big films? Coincidence right? And even if it were a coincidence, what exactly dictates the validity of everything that was said then and to that of what’s being said now? Oh I am sorry. I forgot that passing judgement is passé. Now you are supposed to call them opinions or much rather ‘choices’ in order to project them as validated constitutional rights as well as human rights in front of the society.
Okay. Maybe I am being too cynical without actually being objective here. Let’s be serious for a while. Firstly, when Deepika responded earlier to TOI’s cleavage comments, she didn’t just talk about how it was indecent of it to do so but built about a large propaganda consisting of tweets, interviews and the whole women empowerment saga that the country loves so much. It was a pretty good stint by her measures and it surely helped influence the opinions regarding her movie then with critics clamouring and going gaga over it. Secondly, my point is that she could have easily gone over this matter ‘objectively’ as a simple complain or a supposed misdoing on TOIs part and that would have sufficed. But No. That would have been little fun. Right?
And here she is again. This time with a force of 98 other ‘women from varying walks of life’ that have come together to somewhat lay down rules as to what the freedoms of the feminine sex have to be in the society. Want to examine this ‘manifesto’ of theirs? Let’s do this-
- Loving temporarily or lusting forever- Ooh.. What a shade have they chosen out of the whole spectrum of Women Empowerment. Love vs. Lust, the ultimate battleground for a corn-fed, pizza-bred girl of the Metro right? How does that even have to do anything with the cause these people have stood for? So debauchery will bring the freedom that will do away with all inequality in the society. And we thought eliminating dowry and child marriages, bringing education to the girl-child was what is needed. Silly we !
- There are 99 women in the video- all of them wealthy and influential enough that there is little chance that there could have been any decision in their lives they had been forced for. When will people understand that this whole process is not about whether the daughter of these prosperous families get to speak at the dining table but about the ground realities that most people cannot possibly fathom?
- The video talks about freedoms of choice for women in context with working hours, sexual orientations and justification of hedonism for women. Maybe the supposed idea behind it was that all this is considered okay for men and so it should be okay for women too. But the whole notion backfires given the sort of phrases and adulterated bellowing they have used to say it out that it sort of justifies men doing all that given that women are also allowed(for lack of a better word) to do all that. This would be some society we are talking about.
- A woman’s comment on the same video read- “What do you mean by “Your” baby. I thought it belonged to “US”.Even his pleasure can be your pain.This ad is promoting Women Domination”. Nothing left to say on this one. So let’s move on.
- Sex outside of marriage- Where exactly does the line between freedom and anarchy lie? Even if we don’t talk about the rich-culture and the right culture of India, does this video really want to say that actions like these are justified and have no harsh effect on a family and the life of the children. What world are we talking about? A post-apocalyptic one?
- Finally, the video aims to make a commodity out of a woman talking about her sizes, wearing clothes as they like and somehow finding a line after each of these phrases to cover up for this advertisement made for a fashion brand (Vogue). Although, such a thing would be good from a marketing point of view, to call it an empowering message is plain wrong. At the end of it all, intelligence is about how well someone can make a fool out of you and choice is about whether to be an open-minded viewer of all this trash or a blind junkhead.
The best thing to take away home for me as a no-nonsense blogger is the response this video has got. It has views Yes. But most of the commenters really see the true picture of it and a large part of those are women. Thus, in a way, instances like these should happen from time to time. Maybe they are tests for the fairer sex. And when they pass with glowing colours, it keeps the light glowing.
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Well…Well…Well… How easy it is for us to criticize someone and build up an opinion on others. But before making out an opinion or any remark on their views, do we, for once, consider ourselves by keeping us in their shoes. Do we at all give a thought, the celebrities, who has to go through a lot of ordeal everyday, right from some frenzy fans to hounding media, Doesn’t that makes an impact on their thought process, doesn’t that make them a bit different from the generals. Or may be, In our country this has been the tradition, where people gets popularity by doing something different than the others. In short, what I am trying to say here is, the so-called celebrities are not so bad, and they just don’t do all the acts to give them some benefits for their business projects. It’s the media, the crazy fans, the critics, who always keeps an eye on each of their activities, and perhaps changes them as a person.
Hi Raahool, Glad to know your point of view on this. What forms my side on the matter is that the actress concerned has made a public stint of some opinions that are misleading in every way and hence should have thought twice before doing such a thing. It’s not like she has passed her views in some party and we have picked it from there and made a controversy out of it. Yes they have personal lives but saying such things on a video like this is not justified. Moreover, she seems to be forming a habit out of it in order to promote her films. Lastly, I feel you too would disagree with what was said in that video, right?
While every person is entitled to their views, personally I felt she got inspired to project herself as ultra modern. The other thing is probably recently she was highly praised for coming out of the closet on depression and now wants to retain the same level of interest among the people.
Maybe Abhirup. But the content sure is trashy and I think you would agree too, Right? Moreover, look at the timing of such an ad. It’s a PR stint all the way
Maybe just PR, but one should not forget the fact that she was the first celeb to speak on depression so openly. Also maybe we need a few outspoken celebs