What’s in a name? A lot. What’s in a cleavage? A lot more. The YouTube video shared by The Times of India suddenly attracted a lot of eyeballs and rightly so, especially because of the bone of contention: Deepika Padukone’s skin show. Just as tempers flared and a usually indifferent Deepika decided to step out and yell her disapproval in a rather public way, tweeting TOI into embarrassment, a flurry of tweets and open letter followed suit. And just when we thought we would get to read yet another meek apology from TOI, retreating into defeat, we saw a brazen reply, more brazen than the skin show itself.
TOI came up with an equally fiery reply, posing questions that didn’t really seem to strike our thoughts the moment this storm brewed in a tea cup. The timing is the one that rattled my brain for starters. TOI claims this video had been doing the rounds of YouTube for more than a year. While it did agree that the headline look lewd, yet the timing did look like a factor for sure. With her movie Finding Fanny just on the cusp of release, ‘any publicity is good publicity’ did look like an ulterior motive.
Having said that, any newspaper, any form of media cannot objectify a woman. Whether she chooses to be covered from top to toe, or whether she struts around flaunting her curves as for nobody, it is for her to decide. I do agree that the objectification of a woman should be treated as one of the biggest crimes against women, but Deepika is a public figure who has willingly showed skin for a number of photo shoots and events.
If anything this verbal brawl is doing is just showing how much mileage we can create out of a woman and her body. Deepika and TOI, it’s perhaps high time that we move on instead of forcing this whole cleavage thing down people’s throats. Deepika is a public figure and should know that stuff will be written about her. At the same time, being one of the most widely-read newspapers, TOI should be more responsible; a LOT more responsible. Luring readers based on cheap stuff is certainly not class.
To both the warring parties, MOVE ON. To the people who are unnecessarily creating hype around this, THERE’S NO NEED.