If one were to judge Akshay Kumar and wife Twinkle’s cutesy act at the Lakme Fashion Week within this context, then there is little doubt that it would fare poorly on all counts. For one, it was badly executed. Akshay Kumar’s pronounced yet self-conscious swagger, his expression of proud bashfulness as he presented himself like a schoolboy with a trophy and Twinkle’s laboured attempt at unbuttoning made the moment excruciatingly awkward, like stepping into a bad bedroom moment.  

There were many, including the fashionistas gathered in the room on that occasion who might justifiably have felt that the act overstepped the bounds of decency. In reality, there was a funny, almost moralistic touch about the episode i.e. in the choice of the un-buttoner. It is unclear whether the decision to go up to his wife, Twinkle, was a planned or a spur of the moment thing by Akshay Kumar (reports claim the honours were to be done by a model on the ramp but the actor chose to break from the script). In effect it was a choice that seemed to root touchingly but somewhat ludicrously for monogamy in an industry known to harbour fickle relationships and by a star with a reputably chequered romantic past.  

Above all, there is the matter of intent. Whatever the unbuttoning act may have hoped to achieve, nobody has made the claim that it was intended to challenge social attitudes or to represent an idea, lofty or trivial. The act, in all its outrageousness was meant merely to publicise and sell a brand of denims that the actor was an ambassador of and which was titled with literal appropriateness,  ‘Unbuttoned’.   

... contd.