An open and closed letter to media predators.
Dear media predators who commodify women,
She’s Goddess Durga, she’s Kali; she creates, she nurtures. But she also destroys; she kills; she burns. Of the many shades that a woman can have, these are the darkest, which, when provoked, can blister you and blind you. Dear ‘such newspapers’, you seem to have awakened some sort of a monster; a monster, that you yourself conceived. A woman, as patient as giving as she may seem, gives even more generously when you fiddle with no-go areas. Just as kind as she is, she is equally feisty, meaning no one can mess around with her and still be in the armour of safety. She will rip it apart and there will be gashes for the world to see and shudder in fear.
Dear ‘such newspapers’, a woman is a woman, not a body. We become one only after we die. Till then we are all people, and so is a woman. Instead of localising your focus, just like you have localised your content, focus on ethics. You’re not insulting her; you’re insulting and embarrassing yourself. Why doesn’t the focus ever shift to the other gender? Ever? Because it doesn’t grab enough eyeballs? When there are things like rape and domestic violence occupying one space of your focus, the other lures readers with lewd pictures, carefully photographed from all the correct angles and sold under ‘must-see’ garbs.
When you talk about cleavage flaunting and character assassination, don’t you flinch? Someone somewhere might be looking at your wife in the same manner. When we can condemn the eve-teaser on the road and plant a stinging slap on his cheeks, why shouldn’t we do that to all the so-called journalists who ‘make’ news out of a woman’s body? I fail to understand, isn’t there any other ‘news’ that won’t get you readers? You not just publish such audacious content, you also cover it up saying ‘it’s a compliment’. And then, when the world and its wife lashes out at you, you come up with a seemingly childish reply, which you think is all tongue-and-cheek. And if you believed and stuck to your ‘point of view’ so sincerely, why did you take the gallery off? Just a question.
When celebrities are spotted without their undergarments, you run and look for better angles to photograph the embarrassment; and when she does choose to wear one, you photograph that too, whenever it does a peek-a-boo? What she wears and what she doesn’t is her choice, you’re going to photograph it anyway, isn’t it?
To these papers, not just have you enraged your readers and followers, you’ve also gone one step ahead in the same treacherous direction, uploading yet another disrespectful gallery called ‘Hot babes with ugly legs’, which has been picked up by international media houses like The Independent. They’ve called this article mean and pointless. There you go, dear big newspapers, there goes your reputation down the ditches.
Remember, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Remember again, equal and OPPOSITE. So, when you tried to woo your readers with almost x-rated content, they lashed out at you. When you wrote that reply, people began hating you. And your ‘I-don’t-care’ attitude just hammered the final nail in your coffin.
This shows one thing for sure – yes, there’s a market for this kind of content in India, but no one expected it to be YOU. And yes, in India, she’s considered a Goddess, but exploited like a cow. Journalists write stories, sensationalists make it up.
Sincerely yours,
Parvathy Gopalakrishnan
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