Dear Mahira, thank you for uncovering the misogyny once more

Dear Mahira Khan,

Hope I didn’t barge into your break time in between shoots. *Winks*

That day, while casually scrolling through my Facebook home page, I stopped abruptly as a certain headline flashed. ‘Mahira Khan’, ‘Ranbir Kapoor’, ‘smoke break’, ‘Love bites’… I read.

From that moment onward, I knew, Ranbir wouldn’t be called names. You’d be. After all, one woman, wearing a backless dress, delicately holding a burning cigarette with her crafted fingers, accompanied by a male friend is quite a news.  Why, is the question. A part of the internet seemed quite worried as to how would this impact on the ‘decent’ image that you’ve carried out so far. As long as smoking is believed to be injurious not to one’s health but to one’s character and as long as having a boyfriend (in this case, an imaginary one) is a token of shamelessness, trolls are sure to have a gala time all across the internet.

Mahira, you’re a strong, independent and self-made woman. You’re not just an accomplished individual who is great at her work, but you’re also a single mother who sole-handedly takes care of a budding life. You’ve had the courage to shake off relationships that weren’t worth anymore, and you live your life without pleasing anyone. I know, you know it all. I also know, you’ve been told this many, many times. But when I see how capable women like you are often at the receiving end of dirtiest flacks, I wonder if we are actually heading towards any progression.

It is so amazingly hypocritical of the moral police that they’ve been not only secretly relishing bare bodies of women in all parts but are also guilty of objectifying in so many ways. The most objectionable memes found on the internet often feature women. Women who are fat, women who are dark, actresses, item dancers. Women who do not fit the preset definition of ‘beauty’, women who do not buy the usual idea of ‘decency’, women who dress how they like to, speak what they want to. I feel nothing but funny when the sheerly regressive, abaft  population is ‘offended’ so easily. Like come on, you offend us every damn day! In fact, you don’t just offend us, you fail us too!

As a functioning journalist myself, I come across enough of such misogynist, judgmental crap on the internet. Almost never finding men at the receiving end now feels saturating.

It amazed me as people took the effort to zoom in and find a love bite on your bare back. Take this much effort and throw the damned biscuit wrapper into the dustbin and not on the road, and life will be easier. Degrading a woman for having a love bite (again imaginary in this case) will stop sounding funny only the day you successfully abolish lovemaking from the world. Till that time, everything from a love bite to BDSM is my choice. Please stay shut and may be work on your own intimate life?

But that wasn’t the end. Soon, one cafe in Pakistan decided to pick the photo, twist it and use it for their own advertisement. LOL!

And what’s funnier is, the apparent protectors of ‘values’ dug their ethics and reached a conclusion that a mother must dress a certain way and be allowed to go out with certain companies only. I would definitely want to know which moral book teaches that.

As I stared at the ad wherein the cigarette in your hand has been replaced with a straw and hence you’re now sipping from a large glass of chocolate shake, I recalled the first pre-condition of patriarchy. Use her to your best, but place her under your feet as well. Sigh!

By now, you should know the thing. People want to read about you. Whether or not you care Mahira, you matter and you are discussed. Oh, you’re awesome too.

And I hope , your league grows!

Ranjini Maitra

Journalist. Writer. Reader. Enthu cutlet. Mood-swing machine. Day dreamer. Sandwiched between ‘live life fully’ and ‘lose some weight’. Mantra of life: Love and love more.