The Accidental Feminist

The film star’s upbraiding of a newspaper over its description of her photograph earns her widespread support

There is a traditional pact between the gossip pages and the film celebrity—the former will write anything and everything without attribution or substantiation, often salacious, and the latter will tolerate it as the going price of being a public figure. Deepika Padukone decided to break that agreement last Sunday.

To a tweet by Times of India’s entertainment handle @ToiEntertain: ‘OMG: Deepika Padukone’s cleavage show’ accompanied by an image of her cleavage and a link to the report on its website, she replied with a tweet of her own, ‘ YES!I am a Woman. I have breasts AND a cleavage! You got a problem!!??’ And immediately overnight, she became a feminist icon.

Actually she made a series of three tweets. The other two were, ‘Supposedly India’s ‘LEADING’ newspaper and this is ‘NEWS’!!??’ and ‘Dont talk about Woman’s Empowerment when YOU don’t know how to RESPECT Women!’. And in reply @ToiEntertain further dug its own grave with this tweet, ‘It’s a compliment! You look so great that we want to make sure everyone knew! :)’.

Since then the whole of Bollywood, from Shah Rukh Khan to Nimrat Kaur, has came out in support of Deepika. On Facebook and Twitter, women and men are going ecstatic over what she did. This is, however, hardly the first time that the media has made capital out of the body of film stars.

The actress Dia Mirza aptly put it while tweeting her thanks to Deepika. She said: ‘Entertainment ‘news’ has rarely ever treated women with much respect. I’m surprised by the surprise. For once some1 decided not to let it go.’

What is also true is that Bollywood itself also fuels the habit—aspiring stars court the media to get noticed, and within the industry, filmmakers routinely exploit the body to seduce audiences: otherwise you wouldn’t have wet saris and rain dances and item numbers. This too, it is often argued by people like Shabana Azmi, is demeaning because it objectifies women.

The Times of India’s tastelessness is part of a culture firmly entrenched for decades. And not just them, all publications do it on a daily basis in the form of baseless rumours of relationships or semi-erotic images.

It will be too much to expect a burst of anger by Deepika to now call that equation into question. Life will go on because the media and the film industry leech off each other.

Last year, a newspaper broke the news about Shah Rukh Khan’s surrogate baby but got it totally wrong when it reported that there was sex determination done. The superstar was furious but soon peace was made and Shah Rukh even wrote a column for it later under his byline. Likewise, there will be interviews again of Deepika in The Times Group’s publications.

What the incident indicates is Deepika’s own position in Bollywood. She is in the middle of a golden run with a series of huge blockbusters behind her. And she has just got critical acclaim for Finding Fanny, a movie far removed from the traditional commercial fare of Bollywood but which is doing well at the box-office anyway. It is a movie where she is cast with true acting greats like Naseeruddin Shah and Pankaj Kapur and has still managed to hold her own.

Deepika is the biggest female star in the country at present and when someone like that gives the media a dressing down, India will stand up and clap even as people go back to looking at cleavages in the next day’s newspaper.

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