Family favours the boy

Under a thorny bougainvillea creeper, you can enjoy fragile bougainvillea flowers as they softly fall on you. In exactly the same way, Bollywood films mostly perpetuate and reinforce patriarchal mindsets when they use women as colourful flowers following society's barbed bidding.

Bollywood discriminates against women: Up to the 20th century, Bollywood generally held up traditional values of demure, sari-clad women for the nation to emulate; the ones dressed in Western clothes were shown as immoral or vamps. Catering to NRIs in the 21st century, women are in designer clothing flaunting affluence. Did Bollywood contribute any learning to society on modernity, culture, education, social values, innovation, art? You will always find fantasy and subtle violence, the macho hero eve-teasing women who run around trees, now thin pillars at discotheques, smiling and saying, "Nahi, nahi!" This conveys that women want to be puppets. Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt frankly disclosed recently, "There's no denying that filmmakers have portrayed women as objects as mute animals being led by the chain by men," adding that this has to be corrected.

Bollywood mirrors the way families prioritise boys. I'm not questioning the creative liberty of the director, just showcasing the mediocrity of creative ideation in films with the sole ambition of making box office hits. Aside from encashing money, films with skewed gender balances teach nothing about respecting women as individuals. Funnily enough, without playing any role to advance society, old Bollywoodians become politicians. Does it prove politicians with popularity are scarce in India?

Racism with fairness cream: Among the many discriminatory angles that promote bias against women is the Rs 2,000 crore market for fairness creams. India being a vast, deep, heterogeneous country in terms of its geography, culture, language, economic disparities, it's obvious there will be differences among people. Already the caste system unfairly assigns us permanent stations in life from birth. The female foetus is under threat of being aborted if her gender is known. Now, modern technology has created another stigma—a racial beauty cream to make dark skinned faces fair. How come we degrade women by accepting a face bleaching product to determine beauty? Most matrimonial advertisements peddle the girl's skin colour along with caste and education.

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