It is your choice to not like it at all. It is your choice to hate the supposed hypocrisy that Deepika Padukone presents in this 'weak attempt' to sell feminism. It is your choice to be blind as a bat and completely ignore the powerful message that this video was trying to propagate. And it is my choice to defend it.
Homi Adajania's video for Vogue Empower that features Deepika Padukone and some other female celebrities from entertainment industry, has received unprecedented amount of hate in the last 48 hours. In the video, that I'm sure everyone (except that guy living under the rock) has seen, she talks about what is her choice. And when she says 'my choice', she means it is a choice for all women out there. And that has hit a raw nerve.
I don't know what Homi Adajania intended for the video to look like. I don't know what everyone thought it said. Let me tell you what I saw and heard. The video doesn't talk about all those things being only a woman's choice. No. What it says, is that in a nation where women have been treated like filth for years and decades, it is time that they too are made aware that they have the choice to do certain things and the choice to not do them. It does not redeem women from any kind of accountability. The key word throughout the video has been 'choice', and any choice comes at a cost. But the sad reality is that women, in many parts of the country, are not aware of the mere fact that they too have that choice in front of them.
The video has been called out as sexist and that it has not made it abundantly clear that these are choices that even men are entitled to. Let us introspect here for a moment. Did it have to be made clear to us men at all? I for one have always been aware that I can come home at any time I want to. Wear what I want to. Do what I want to. We men have always have had those choices in front of us. So why cry foul. This video does not negate that fact that men have the same choices. I don't even know from where people drew out that conclusion.
The video has been especially criticized for one particular thing that Deepika Padukone said. "It is my choice to have sex outside of marriage." Yes. Admittedly, it is wrong; because well, adultery is wrong. But does this one statement negate the important message that the rest of the video is trying to spread? And while I don't defend it, Deepika Padukone neither glorifies adultery nor does she ask people to commit it. When she says that it is her choice to have sex outside of marriage, she holds herself accountable for it. And that is important because it shows us that not all choices are good, and that even a bad choice is something that is for a woman to make for herself. Maybe their choice of words was wrong. Or maybe it was their choice to word it that way.
Vogue is a brand trying to sell itself. And honestly, a large number of women who hail from the rural parts, who are uneducated, and who are unaware of their rights and their right to make choices don't even fall into the target audience for Vogue. But should Vogue then not try to spread the message at all?
And Deepika Padukone has been accused even in the past, to take up on social causes just prior to the release of her movies. But does that make the message wrong? Everyone is out there to sell an image or sell a product. In between all of this consumerism, if there can be a little good, I think it is worth the hypocrisy.
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