How Bollywood Is Failing The Women Of India
If you’ve watched a Bollywood movie in the last five years, chances are you noticed perfectly-sculpted actresses, donning scanty outfits not unlike ones you would find on Beyonce. Many popular movies feature women dancing suggestively to
item songs.
It’s also common to watch on-screen kisses (strictly taboo before about a decade ago) and even sex scenes.
One of the top 10 highest grossing films for 2014 so far is “Ragini MMS 2,” a horror film replete with sex scenes featuring **** star Sunny Leone.
I used to ponder the irony: Bollywood celebrities would gyrate to songs about “never getting their body,” yet every time I visited family in Mumbai, I’d take extra care to dress modestly.
That curiosity turned to horror as report after
report of sexual violence kept surfacing from India. Crimes against women are up 7.1% since 2010, according to National Crime Record Bureau statistics.
There is a fundamental mismatch in attitudes towards sex within Indian society and what the majority of the entertainment industry portrays. The video below depicts some of the realities of two Indias – one where Bollywood celebrities are overly sexualized, contrasted with the increasing brutality towards women.
Why Should We Care About Bollywood?
Bollywood has a powerful role in shaping mindsets and behaviors in India. I would argue it’s much more than just an entertainment industry. Movies have reflected the aspirations of many Indians for decades. Often, celebrities are revered in a manner akin to religious fervor.
As India continues to modernize and in many ways, Westernize, Bollywood keeps up by showcasing “modern” relationships. Some mainstream movies now portray realities of the urban Indian youth: pre-marital sex, live-in relationships, and women and men who are relatively independent from familial obligations.
However, with only 30% of India’s population being urban, these movies are largely unrelatable to the average moviegoer. For most Indian men, social interactions with the opposite sex are severely limited. What they see on screen guides much of their perceptions of women. Portraying women as sex objects has far-reaching ramifications from normalizing eve-teasing and stalking, to glorifying rape and murder.
Women feeling a sense of safety in India is unquestionably in danger.
On one hand, Bollywood projects that women are empowered to wear what they want. But more disturbingly, they continue to be highlighted as objects of desire, with only their bodies to offer. The most popular item songs depict a naughty village girl – playing up the “Munni” and “Chameli” fantasy. In a country where the majority of the population is rural, showing sexy village girls is inherently problematic. Rather than inspiring social change for women to be truly sexually empowered,
these songs perpetuate the culture of misogyny that has shackled Indian women for years.
The Conflicting Messages of Bollywood
Confusingly, the core message of many mainstream movies is that women should aspire to marriage. It’s hard to reconcile ideals of sexuality with the vast majority of Indian society where many women live with their parents until the day they are married, with no open conversations about dating or sex.
For young men too, seeing the unrealistic portrayal of sex in mainstream Bollywood is incongruous with what they see at home. At home, mothers and sisters are protected to the point of being stifled. Certainly, sexuality is never discussed. While in the movies, women are highlighted as wanton. Sexual tension and frustration continues to bubble under the surface.
This also creates a culture of hypocrisy divided along class lines, where upper-middle class women are free to dress and behave in a certain way, but others are punished for it. Women are almost exclusively blamed for – and failed – by lawmakers and enforcers when they are brutally attacked.
What Needs to Change
To effect any real change, we must bridge the chasm between the India that Bollywood portrays and the reality of the ordinary Indian woman in a slowly-modernizing, largely conservative society.
I’m not at all suggesting that we should revert to the Bollywood of yesteryears, where chaste romances were portrayed as the norm. In fact, I find it encouraging when movies want to discuss truths that were shunned previously: from pre-marital sex to divorce. However, by simultaneously over-sexualizing women on screen, we sabotage any progress women are making towards equal opportunities, both in their personal and professional lives. It’s time the powerful entertainment industry shouldered some responsibility for the India they’re helping to shape.
Do you agree?
How Bollywood Is Failing The Women Of India - Forbes
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