Disclaimer 1 : This article is not on feminism.
Disclaimer 2 : For me 'sex outside of marriage' does not mean adultery, it means to be in an open relationship

The first time I stumbled upon the ‘My Choice’ video by Vogue it did not seem provocative but it did make me google 'sex outside of marriage'. Deepika looked gorgeous of course. Then the video went viral, which it had the potential of.  Following that, its criticisms went viral which was also expected.  So far so good.

Then, all of a sudden a sort of a sort of guerrilla campaign started lashing Deepika, questioning her sense of feminism. Some people who cared to know about the maker, Homi, included him too but most of the criticism is still being hurled against Deepika. Being a public figure, it could be understood as being part of the package. But it did not make sense to me so I put myself in her shoes and tried to make sense of it.

Scenario : I get a call from Vogue saying they an article on women empowerment of 500 words appealing to their clientele. Since I perceive it to be a good opportunity to make money and make a point, I take the job.

The limit on words and my experience of market behaviour guides me to reach out to women who do not have to face scourges of rural India. I reach out to urban women who earn a decent income or are rich by other means, can make some decisions in their lives but feel limited because they have other issues, a bad body-image, lack of sexual freedom, obligations to take a husband's name- things that might seem superficial given the condition of India, but are real world problems. I, for one, would like to keep my name. If you are reading this article, there are fair chances that you might or will face one of these in life. Since the article is in Vogue, I only touch upon these issues.

Reaction 1 : When the article gets published, it is appreciated by some as empowering women which is exactly what I wanted and discarded by others as a banal effort by Vogue for not touching issues that mar 80% of Indian women. Spoofs are made and fun is being poked at the piece.

I accept it with grace. Every piece of work, creative or otherwise garners some criticism because it is limited in scope. Sometimes these limitations are obvious, but most of the times they are hidden.  Any article on a deep issue such as gender-quality is bound to have loopholes, regardless of the intellectual prowess and intention of the writer.

Reaction 2 : When the article gets published, it is appreciated by some as an empowering video while the others blame me for not having any idea of ‘real world problems’. They, morbidly, attach my motivation solely to money and my stupidity. I am called an incorrigible feminist pig too. Also since my main job is that of a bookseller and people only buy gossip magazine at my store despite the fact that I would love them to buy literature, I am being targeted as a money-mongering book seller and writer. They say I would write erotica if I were given enough money to do that ( I am not sure why that is necessarily a bad thing but let us assume it is not great)

It is this extreme sort of reaction against Deepika in context of  the ‘My Choice’ video that I have a difficulty making sense of. 

The worst I can assume of Deepika is that she was paid to do the piece for  Vogue, that being paid was her sole motivation and that she, for similar reasons, does other advertisements that perpetuate patriarchy. Even by that assumption, aren’t we being too harsh on her? She did not claim, as far as I know, that she is a feminist because she did this piece. She just did an advertisement that, if I choose to have the slightest of empathy, she might have likened to activism, because according to me, it does talk about some important things, which her movies for obvious reasons fail to do. Why do we feel the necessity to de-throne Deepika from a place that she never claimed as hers?

Would you and I not do the same, write that article,  make a cartoon, create a song for Vogue if those were our professions and there was some activism involved too ? Some of us might not. But if I know the world well, most of us would.

I know I would write that Vogue article because it is relevant even if ever so slightly and pays too. Very few jobs in the world are meaningful today. Entertaining humanity is not easy, not in India atleast. The rubbish that we see on media is as much a  reflection of our choices as it is the profession's hunger for money. So when something slightly sensible comes along, we should be careful while criticizing it and avoid throwing  the baby out with the bathwater.

As far as Deepika is concerned, she chooses to stay in the industry for exactly the same reasons that most of us find plausible to stay in our jobs. The best paying jobs in the country ask us to promote consumerism, we sell cola to kids at Pepsi, make cigarettes at ITC (which the Indian MPs tell me might not be such a bad thing afterall), do not accept social responsibility for the rigs we dig at BP solely because they pay us well and bring us prestige. Most of us are destroying the world where we try to get a grip on the lavish lives of our dreams. The modern world is a complex set of choices. It would be a great disappointment if we are robbed of meaning in everything we do, because our professions create such a context. Like us, Deepika never claimed she is changing the world with her films. She should be allowed to think that she did something good by being part of something that talks about choices of women, even if it does that for only .1% of women in the country.


Deepika, for all I know, in her capacity tried to do a good thing by participating in this endeavour. While we make sense of the message and its limitations, it is Our Choice to shoot the messenger or judge her gently. 


I hope we make that choice wisely.