Men in Iran are wearing hijabs in public to show support to women who are forced to cover their heads and they are not even ashamed of it. They are even uploading their pictures in hijabs on social networking sites without any hesitation. The campaign can be followed on the hashtag #meninhijab.
Now let’s come back to India. What kind of campaigns or events are taking place in India to aware the mass about the problems women are facing. Not many I think. Infact, I believe we are taking a step back day by day rather than able to counter growing sexism in India.
Moreover, Bollywood is only coming up with kind of movies which are portraying women as ‘bimbos’ or just for objectification purpose. Instead of making more modern movies keeping in mind the current issues of the country, they are actually producing more nonsense day by day. Even if handful of movies do target critical issues, it fails to create any impact on Box office as compared to movies like ‘Housefull 2’ or ‘Great Grand Masti’.
Salman Khan’s ‘rape remarks’ are taken lightly and forgivable. Mind you, nobody from the industry criticized him for his remarks. And if few people from the industry like Sona Mohapatra even dared to speak, they were constantly shushed and abused because Oh my God! you dare not speak about him.
His movie ‘Sultan’may have broken all records at the box office but the movie showed many wrong angles. Anushka Sharma who is a No.1 wrestler just let go the opportunity to participate in olympics because her motherly instincts suddenly overpowers her 20 years of hardwork. While she worked hard day and night to reach to that position, Salman Khan in no time achieves success. She is only setting up a bad example for every woman of this country.
This is not it. Recently in an interview, Lisa Haydon said that ‘Feminism’ is overrated. Not only her, even Kareena Kapoor once said that though she played the role of a feminist in her movie, she is not one in her actual life. I would really like to pose a question to them if they even know what really feminism means? Doing skin-whitening cream commercials and then calling feminism overrated doesn’t fit at all.
Actors and Actresses are like sacrosanct to youths. They look upon them as role models. What they say and do, their actions get communicated to their fans. They are telling youth that a particular shape and body size is sexy. So people of only a particular body shape and size can look good? they can actually contribute tremendously if they choose to select their words and actions wisely and act upon them.
On one side, there is Iran where people have more liberal outlook despite the Islamic Revolution country witnessed in 1979. They are fighting the war with the fundamentalists intellectually. Men are coming out on the roads to support women. And on the other side is our country which is ‘democratic’ yet its citizens are ignorant to take the women question seriously.
Bollywood should realize that it has a huge responsibility on its shoulder. It should try to explore areas and bring them into the movies which can make a difference to the lives of different people. Indians should realize that our movies represent who we are. Ofcourse, Bollywood cannot survive without making commercial movies with tangy songs and saucy dance moves but it can surely work upon those movies which can help Indians to grow and change their thought process.