Outraging women's modesty! Vijay Deverakonda, Ranveer Singh & the over-zealous moral police
Outraging women's modesty! Vijay Deverakonda, Ranveer Singh & the over-zealous moral police
What was cheesier than Ranveer Singh’s nude photo-shoot was the FIR against him for “outraging the modesty of women”. I didn't know that women's modesty was so fragile in our country that it could get outraged by a man without his clothes on, and that too one where the nude man looked like he had just been stripped by the cops for third-degree interrogation, a la Rajkummar Rao in Hansal Mehta's Shahid.
I am glad that Vidya Balan and Sumona Chakravarty spoke up in protest against the protests on Ranveer’s birthday suit. In this country, slender protest groups pretend to represent a majority view. That’s not just a falsification of facts but also a dangerous trend. When a fringe group claimed all Hindus were outraged by Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (even before its release), they were clearly overstepping the line. Speak for yourself, buddy! I have no issues with Ranveer’s nudity except aesthetic ones. He can do what he likes with his body and mind as long as it doesn’t harm anyone. The only one his nudes has harmed is Ranveer Singh himself. Apparently, he admitted to a close director-friend that he didn’t expect such an uproar and that he has decided to keep a low profile for a while, until the furore blows over , as it has affected his wife and family. With Vijay Deverakonda, who posed nude a few days before Ranveer, the backlash in the South was even worse. A section of the press now accuses Mumbai and Karan Johar of wrongly influencing and corrupting Vijay.
As if he is an impressionable child being led into evil by Karan Uncle! Vijay knows exactly what he wants from his career. He knows he is not a star in the Hindi belt yet. Before his Hindi debut releases on 25 August, Vijay wants to make a splash in the North. It’s really very simple: it’s his career, his decision to do what he likes with his body.
Why are we so squeamish about male nudity, when so many female media celebrities like Sherlyn Chopra and Poonam Pandey habitually show a lot more skin than Vijay or Ranveer? I remember when Sylvester Stallone had done a full frontal photo for Playgirl magazine in 1985,the star was allowed to see the lighter side of his beefcake-ism.
When asked if he has exposed himself completely in the picture Stallone said, “Well, it’s the centre-spread and all they had to do was to put the staple in the copy in such a place that my modesty was automatically covered.”
Ram Gopal Varma, who likes to give his opinion on as many controversial issues as possible, told me how he feels, “If men pose nude then more women would pose nude. On a more serious note, I have an opinion on nudity. When women pose nude, they send out sexual signals. But a male posing nude never sends out sexual vibes," said the filmmaker.
According to Ramu, the choice of publishing Ranveer’s nudes was individual. “He posted those pictures on Instagram. It was up to the mainstream publications to use or not use them. Now we have other guys from the entertainment industry posting their nude pictures and even giving credit to Ranveer for inspiration.”
This, as they say, can happen only in India.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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