Deepika Padukone's saffron bikini row in Besharam Rang: Is female nudity easier to attack and annihilate?

I grew up in a relatively upper middle-class locality in South Kolkata. Our next-door neighbour and owner of a three-storied house – a child-free couple, had a lot of pet cats. My maternal grandmother constantly cursed him – when our roof would be littered with cat poo. Or one of his cats would snoop in through our kitchen sill to steal raw or fried fish. How the passage separating our homes was strewn with litter the cats brought in – and, finally, their howling all night – considered particularly inauspicious in this part of the country. There was, of course, one more reason why Mamma, despised him. Potol (his nickname) was a certified voyeur. A shrivelled up, middle-aged man with a peculiar stoop, a salt and pepper moustache, who wouldn’t shave or change his clothes, for days on end, he nursed an obscene fascination of watching young house helps, bathe. One of our younger maids had also gone to the extent of once complaining of having seen him masturbate while she hung out her clothes to dry – she was still dripping wet (no pun intended), herself. Breaking down and complaining before a rather stern, matriarchal figure, she confessed having sensed Potol staring at her lewdly, from his terrace, which was practically attached to ours when she went upstairs for errands. He had even tried making conversation a couple of times. Bare-chested and always touching his private. My grandmother contemplated speaking to him, directly, many times, and once, even hinted to his wife that all was not well. But, Potol, remained an uncontrolled, ageing pervert with a kink for bare-bodied, young women and would stop at nothing. I don’t know why I remembered him this evening, given that my column is not about the lust levels of the average Indian mard, who often, and, in full public view of their partners or wives (bacche ki Ma, in other words) get away with desperately lewd and double meaning jokes about either checking out other women or being sexless after the biyer jol (a colloquial Bengali term, indicating the early phase of marriage/honeymoon period, in other words), has dried up. I, myself, exited our boisterous family WhatsApp group a year and a half ago, a vile snake pit of grown-ass, married men, who openly spoke of abysmal sex lives, watching Internet porn and shared topless/semi-nude photos – and while these cousins scored highly as successful professionals, popular fathers and doting husbands, in the role-playing, provider and protector department, their own bedroom lives were boring as hell. The wives, either out of shape, post pregnancy, or, in typical, self-sacrificial motion, doting, obsessive and clingy mothers, earned brownie points being proverbially ‘good/dutiful,’ had somewhere along the line, fallen out of sync, sexually with their spouses. Or they were too tired – balancing work and home. Or, they were fighting over bills and bai’s. Also, let’s be frank about the larger raison d’etre of desi couplehood – sanctioned by family, God and society – vansh ko agey barhana – read, childbirth – which, if sanctioned as an Olympic sport, would have skyrocketed us to the highest gold medal winner list! Also, children are seen as quick fixes in a marriage between two adults who maybe well-matched in terms of pedigree, but have nothing in common. There is no vocabulary of intimacy – no sex education, that trains men and women in open and real dialogues about mutual pleasure and why it must be critical for both sexes and an essential ingredient of any long term companionship. Strangely, the wives of these men remained silent. As if, the insult of being invisible, sexually, was not enough, to indicate how soulless and vacuous the whole arrangement really was. I once asked my sister-in-law, a lawyer, why her husband was constantly asking to be hooked up with my single women friends. ‘I run a community for urban, single women in India. I am not a pimp,’ I was livid. She had no reaction. ‘C’mon, all men are horny! And let’s face it, everyone needs a bit of fun outside, once in a while…that’s how marriages survive, darling. Love and sex are not the same,’ she drank her vodka. Then before I could react, she went on to spill the beans on her recent, all girl’s (read wives) Bangkok trip. ‘One of my girlfriends has threesomes…they get a guy in, too. So that, it’s fair on her. And, of course, it is all consensual,’ she looks away. I am probably digressing. I promised to write on Pathan and why I find the surrounding, rowdy ruckus about Deepika’s saffron bikini drowning out, what I find equally, and, if not more, dangerously and diabolically, scary – a morally skewed, cultural, societal, religious and political, double standard about a woman’s body – our lack of agency over our own – and, why, despite an overdose of sexualised popular culture, being doled out to us, almost daily, with female nudity on-screen being commonplace, we still cannot digest the same, sans the occurrence of a controversy! In an article titled ‘Wonder why you see more naked women than men on-screen? Maybe, you’re asking the wrong question,’ on Lily.com, there is reference to a 2018 analysis of 1,100 popular films in Hollywood revealing that 25.4 per cent of women played roles with some nudity, versus 9.6 per cent of men. Martha Lauzen, executive director, Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University is quoted saying that the majority of movie directors and writers are, and always have been, men. Men accounted for 87 per cent of directors and 81 per cent of writers for the 250 highest-grossing domestic films of 2019. Donald Clarke, chief film correspondent at the Irish Times, who is also part of the same article, adds that women have more “rude bits” than men, and therefore “need remove less clothing to render themselves ‘partially naked.’” Plus, he makes a joke, “the male genitalia present, um, cosmetic challenges.” The male gaze – a term coined by British film theorist Laura Mulvey in a seminal 1975 essay, refers to the orientation of the camera: If the lens has a point of view, it’s a male one, aligned with the interests and appetites of male audiences. “Generally speaking,” Lauzen writes in an email in the same article, “women’s bodies have been put on display for men’s pleasure.” India tops the chart in showing as much as 35 per cent of these female characters are shown with some nudity, a first-ever global study of female characters in popular films across the world commissioned by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, with support from UN Women and The Rockefeller Foundation, revealed, showcasing deep-seated discrimination, pervasive stereotyping, sexualisation of women and their underrepresentation in powerful roles by the international film industry. Indian films, the study found, possessed a significantly higher prevalence of sexualisation of female characters and the movies scored low in depicting women in significant speaking roles and as engineers and scientists. While women represent nearly half of the world’s population, less than one third of all speaking characters in films are female and UK-US collaborations and Indian films are at the bottom of the pack. Both American/British hybrid films (23.6 per cent) and Indian films (24.9 per cent) depict female characters in less than one-quarter of all speaking roles. Even the frontrunners (UK, Brazil and South Korea) feature female characters in 35.9-38 per cent of all speaking roles on screen. Indian films are third behind German and Australian movies in showing females in “sexy attire” and at 25.2 per cent India toppe the chart in showing attractive females in its movies. About 35 per cent of female characters in Indian movies are shown with some nudity, the study added. The prevalence of female directors, writers and producers in the Indian films was also not at a very high number. India had 9.1 per cent female directors, slightly above the global average of 7 per cent, while its percentage of female writers was 12.1 per cent, significantly lower than the 19.7 per cent global average. Our sexual regression, our consequent, supressed, sexual corruption, ironical, in the very land which birthed eroticism – that peddles Kamasutra and Khajuraho and Konark to the goras along with Yoga and Ayurveda, has produced pedigree perverts, some even elected government representatives. We vote for men who watch porn in Parliament – we have had elected governments in their well-meaning, moral police, mai baap avatar impose a suffocating ban on a virtual cartoon character. Production of pornography is broadly illegal in India and in June 2009, the immensely popular website which peddled Savitha Bhabhi was censored under anti-pornography laws. But, hey, anyone remember Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa selecting BJP MLA Laxman Savadi as one of his deputies after which several senior BJP leaders angrily questioned his induction into the cabinet? Savadi had stirred headlines in 2012 after he was caught watching a porn clip on his phone in the state assembly along with another minister, CC Patil, who was allotted Mines and Geology ministry in Yediyurappa’s cabinet. The two ministers then quit following public outrage. Savadi had denied watching porn in the assembly and remarked he was “watching the footage to prepare for a discussion on the ill-effects of a rave party”. However, the news channels positioned in the media gallery had clearly captured Savadi watching a video on mobile phone and then sneakily showing it to Patil. The video appeared to show a woman dancing, undressing and then having sex, the BBC too had embarrassingly reported. What I fail to understand is if we love having sex, thinking about sex, watching people have sex and wanting to have sex ourselves – why do we raise such an unholy ruckus about an actor who is simply doing her job in a movie? Because she is a woman? Why we jerk off to Pamela Anderson or Sunny Leone, instead? Calling them bombshells? And deny the same autonomy to Padukone who is in top shape and almost makes SRK appear outdated and pretty ancient, despite his fans raving about how smoking hot he looks at his age. Note, their age difference, though. Which is never a problem, right? The seduction of an older hero by a heroine who is half his age – and, never the reverse. Except, in stories where the older woman is the Bhabhi again – sexless, craving for touch, horny, eying and gunning for younger men, hiring toy boys to fulfil their pyaas (thirst)/hawas/kamna/wasna (lust). No eyebrows raised when year after year and blockbuster after blockbuster – we have leading heroines play the willing seductress. Heck, what is female desire, anyway? Tabu in Astitva bagging the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Marathi in 2000 touching on ‘bold’ topics, such as male chauvinism, taboo relationships, extramarital affairs and spousal abuse. A woman desperate to explore an identity outside a deadbeat marriage. A validation of her womanhood – physical and emotional. Sexual and cerebral. Aparna Sen’s scorching Parama – pretty much on the same lines. A woman who gives in to her need for pleasure – her need to feel like a woman – in control. A woman who is not an object. Who is more than an objectification. Who will not care about being controlled. Chastised. Or, castigated. And, just in case, you are wondering how the Potol story, ends? My grandmother had a shed built that covered the entrance to the toilet used by our house helps. The younger ones were told they need not go to the terrace. They must come out of their baths, fully attired. Just in case… ‘All men are horny….’ Maybe, that was her internalisation, as well… Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.