Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone’s feminist video telling women to choose their own destiny and make their own choices has received a mixed response from her industry peers, feminists, politicians and the online community. Titled “My Choice,” the campaign aims to install the belief that women have a choice over the body, their relationships and their future.
The two-minute video, done in collaboration with Vogue India, is directed by Homi Adjania, with whom the 29-year-old actress worked in “Cocktail” and “Finding Fanny.” It is produced by Dinesh Vijan, with lyrics by “Finding Fanny” writer Kersi Khambatta. Since it was published last weekend, the video has received more than two million views.
Since her Bollywood debut in the 2007 blockbuster “Om Shanti Om” opposite Shah Rukh Khan, Padukone has broken all stereotypes in Bollywood. She recently spoke about her battle with depression. Daughter of badminton player Prakash Padukone, she was born in Copenhagen and raised in Bangalore. As a teenager she played badminton in national level championships, but left her career in sport to become a fashion model. She soon received offers for film roles, and made her acting debut in 2006 as the titular character of the Kannada film “Aishwarya.”
In the clip, Padukone recites a poem about the freedoms females should be entitled to, while the images of 100, mostly unknown, women from Mumbai flash up on the screen. Some of the known faces include actress Nimrat Kaur, filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s wife and film critic Anupama Chopra, Adjania’s stylist wife Anaita Shroff-Adjania, Farhan Akhtar’s wife and hair stylist Adhuna Akhtar and his sister filmmaker Zoya Akhtar.
“My body, my mind, my choice. To wear the clothes I like; even if my spirit roams naked,” she says, addressing the common notion in most parts of the country that women should dress modestly. “My choice; to be a size 0 or a size 15. They don’t have a size for my spirit, and never will,” she continues.
The video has generated a mixed response with some calling it truly empowering while others terming it as hypocritical, elitist and anti-men. Several of Padukone’s Bollywood colleagues and contemporaries like Karan Johar, Alia Bhatt, Randeep Hooda, Arjun Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan have praised her for the video. Many of them even shared it on their micro-blogging sites.
Several have taken issues with the part where Padukone talks about sex outside of marriage. “My choice to marry, or not to marry To have sex before marriage. To have sex out of marriage, or to not have sex. My choice to love temporarily, or to lust forever,” she says. Others have taken issue with who the message is directed at, claiming that the women who would really benefit from it are India’s poorest, but that it is being shared among the those who are already empowered – the middle classes.
Actress Sonakshi Sinha, who called the video a “very good initiative,” said although the video is coming from a good space, she believes that empowerment should be given to the women who actually need it, who are kind of far away from where we are right now. “We have been bred and brought up with luxury,” she said, adding that women empowerment is not always about the kind of clothes you wear, not about who you want to have sex with or stuff like that, but that it’s about employment, strength.
Along with the industry and the online community, the video also received criticism from various political groups. Veteran BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi called the video “height of lack of consciousness”. ”We don’t realize how much we have changed. It has been an Indian tradition of addressing woman as ‘mother’, but now there are objections at being called a mother,” Joshi said.
Reacting to the response to the video, Adjania told 9xe.com that it’s pretty obvious from the reactions received that this is a feeling that has been suppressed for long enough. Talking about the critics he said, “They don’t understand the context or they are Internet trolls hankering for attention, or maybe they have a different viewpoint…it’s a democracy and this is our view and they are entitled to theirs.”
The video also received a response from the men with a version asking the fairer sex to acknowledge men’s ‘choices’ too. The male version has picked up Padukone’s monologue but twisted it with lines like, “My body, my mind and my choices … To wear the clothes I want, not dress the way you want. My choice to come home, when I want. Don’t think I am a cheat, if I stay out or don’t pick your call…” The video ends with a caption, “Respect Men and Women. We do not support cheating or adultery.”
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