The other side of the Deepika Padukone story

While it may be politically correct to support Deepika Padukone's fight to preserve her right to dress the way she wants and to reveal or not reveal whatever she wishes, the question remains: do actors, particularly women, actually guard their physical privacy against the so-called invasive journalism, or do they make use of it to get attention and consciously partner with the media to sustain it?

To my knowledge, many actresses, and we won't name them here, circulate their "hot" (read unclothed) pictures to various publications through their publicists. Over the years, the entertainment media has become a vehicle for public flogging by those very celebrities whom the media helped turn into sex symbols.

I remember the recent case of this very beautiful actress of foreign origin whose picture, with her lower inner wear revealed, appeared on many websites. When I suggested she speak to her lawyer against what she called the vulgar invasion of her private space, she shocked me by saying, "Let it be. What difference does it make? I am an actress. They will find a hundred ways of clicking me in unguarded poses. I might as well learn to live with it."

This chalta hai attitude has, over the years, become the norm among actresses and the go-ahead signal for the media to go full tilt at them. Generally speaking, actresses like being shot in what they think are 'glamorous' poses. Glamour, alas, in our entertainment industry means oomph. And what's oomph without some skin show?

While I fully support Deepika's cool campaign against peek-a-boo journalism, I am not convinced by her colleagues, male and female, who are suddenly the champions of women's empowerment. I've personally heard prominent leading men sitting on the sets of their films with their cronies discussing various parts of their heroines' anatomy.

So, maybe, we should not be getting so righteous over the issue. If celebrities are objectified and commodified, they themselves are, to a large extent, responsible for it. Some 23 years ago, who forced Kimi Katkar to gyrate in a room filled with beer-swigging louts singing a song about how she'd love to be kissed on a Friday?

And what possible tragedy would befall a woman as successful as Katrina Kaif to groove about how sexy she is to a bevy of drooling men in the song Sheila ki jawaani?

It all adds up to a sense of growing despair regarding the way women are perceived by the film industry. That lack of in-house respect for a woman's right to her own space is bound to seep outwards and affect society at large. The media is a mere reflection of the mores and values that guide society.