My Choice !

In the past few days there has been a lot of bashing and dissection of the Vogue Deepika video. For or against the arguments were thought provoking. The concept ‘My Choice’ got me thinking…and many of us thinking. It encouraged many of us to talk about gender equality, have debates and discussions on women empowerment and that is where the video did a great job.
Now I want to talk about a related topic and not the video. I want to talk about how society judges the same choices made by a woman versus a man. Momentarily let us forget what is right and wrong but I feel that the society willingly condones a particular choice made by a man and criticizes the same the choice made by a woman. There are a few exceptions for this but then there are exceptions for everything.

Let us look at some of these examples..

1)      A woman comes home late from work. She lies on the couch watching TV. She does not cook or clean the house. She asks her maid to look after her kids and put them to bed. A man comes home does exactly the same things….she is judged.  

2)     A woman decides she does not want to get married. She wants to have a live in relationship. She does not want kids. A man makes the same choices…. She is judged. Even if we look at our marriage, traditionally a woman is supposed to wear a bindi/mangalsutra to tell the world that she is married and taken. Nothing similar applies to a man.

3)     The kid is not eating adequately, not doing his/her homework, not behaving properly and disobeying her /his teachers, elders, is late to school etc. There could be several reasons, yet somehow the mother is held more responsible than the father. 

4)     A woman is a flirt, has sex before marriage or outside of marriage. Cheating is unfair, be it a man or a woman, yet for the same choice her actions are condemned way more than a man’s.  

Even if we look at our mainstream Bollywood movies a lot of themes revolve around the hero being this super cool flirt , having many girlfriends, not believing in the system of marriage and then finally meeting this perfect conventional girl ( lots of Indian sanskar, fair, tall , slim , long hair ) , falling in love with her and then wanting to marry her. Imagine a similar story with the girl flirting, having many boyfriends, mocking the concept of marriage….will that movie be accepted and get a huge fan following?   

5)     A woman uses abusive language, smokes, drinks, goes to late night parties... she is criticized.  There are set rules for how a girl should talk, sit and behave. If a girl uses abusive language everyone is shocked but a guy says the same words, in the same tone he is ‘showing off his masculinity’.  

6)     A woman is taunted more about her body, weight and skin color. Let’s be honest. The spoof of the video of a man having beer belly (which is funny by the way) doesn’t change that fact.  

These are some of the examples I can think of but I am sure we can find many more. Choices definitely come with consequences and responsibilities.  Also what is right or wrong is very subjective and differs from person to person. So the point I want to make here is that if we want to judge an act, then we should judge men and women equally otherwise not judge at all. Imagine how awesome it would be not getting judged at all! J