Seldom can we see a newspaper, rarely a popular name in the business, make a complete fool of it. But when one of the most widely read dailies makes a blundering foul and then turns belligerent in the face of criticism, it becomes all the more ridiculous. This is exactly what we have seen happen in the last couple of days in the Deepika Padukone Vs Times of India/TOI (specifically Bombay Times) row.
In its latest reply to Ms. Padukone’s outrage at being crassly objectified by TOI, the paper not only remained unapologetic for their blunders, rather labelled the young thespian a hypocrite and tried backing the allegation with an array of photographs selected from her days as a calendar girl for Kingfisher, magazine shoots, film promotions etc. where she had flaunted her physique of her own accord. In fact, the author went a step forward and highlighted the actor’s now much ‘contentious’ cleavage with a big, bold, red arrow on one of the images, so that the reader’s do not miss out on it. The logic behind the craziness is that – she flaunts her body in public all the time, so her outrage is baseless.
Q: Now what does this logic remind one of?
A: The famous “she was asking for it”, victim blaming/slut shaming logic used to explain rape, abuse and molestation.
Q: And how is the paper’s response akin to slut shaming and their logic flawed?
A: The issue of consent.
The issue which has been thrown up in this week long fiasco is that of consent. The surreptitiously captured shot of Ms.Padukone’s body, its subsequent parading with the attention grabbing “OMG! Deepika’s Cleavage Show” header is not the same as Ms.Padukone’s consensual posing for the images being used as justification in the paper’s response. It is explicit ‘consent’ which serves as the pretty thick line between right and wrong, in this context. While in the latter she had used her own faculties to make an informed decision regarding how to portray herself and where, in the former she had been stripped of her agency when someone made that call for her and decided to objectify her body parts.
Ms.Padukone’s decision to model in a bikini does not hand over anyone the divine right to objectify her, to treat her like a piece of meat. In doing so, the daily has behaved much like the lecherous louts we as women have to encounter every day, it has committed the same wrong of objectification which we as a society are trying to overcome and with their lame attempt at justifying the same, tacitly implied that women who confidently flaunt their physicality deserve to be objectified.
This situation becomes graver when you realize that this attitude is borne by one of the leading dailies of the country, one which has access to a substantial audience, and in some sense is responsible in moulding the views and thought processes of many from that audience.
What is actually astonishing about the whole debacle is not Ms.Padukone’s reaction but rather the paper’s stance on the issue and its stark contrast with the tone of the main paper. The main paper of TOI bears a liberal tone, talks of equality, women’s rights, dignity and other lofty ideals, and here we have a blatant contradiction of it all in what can be only called an insensitive and misogynistic reply from within the paper itself.
So here one must pause and ask, who is really being hypocritical? The celebrity who felt the insensitive objectification of her body, publicly without her knowledge and permission, was outrageous, or, the paper which harbours liberal ideals on one hand and subscribes to narrow-minded misogyny on the other?
The answer to this question is becoming extremely clear as the paper’s callous response and handling of the issue is being decried from all over, including from within certain sections of TOI itself.
Finally, it is also being said that the entire issue is a publicity stunt by either Ms.Padukone individually or both she and TOI concertedly. Personally both scenarios seem rather untenable to me, as neither party involved would need or benefit from such an issue. So all I can say is that, it is high time the paper corrects this incredible display of thoughtlessness by making the much needed apologies, and put the matter to rest.
