The world has fragmented since the day Deepika Padukone’s documentary film for Vogue Empower went viral. While some have lauded her enactment of the freedom of choice, which is every individual’s birth right, others have accused her of being hypocritically endorsing contradictory messages.
There isn’t perhaps a single woman of Indian origin who didn’t troll this video on social media: posted the video, posted articles or blogs about the video, commented on it, or even liked a post about it. I posted the Vogue video on my Facebook timeline too and accumulated a few likes and shares.
But soon, my news feed got flooded with anti-Vogue and anti-Deepika opinion pieces, articles, blog posts and even Facebook posts.
Some of the headlines that went viral were like this:
Dear Deepika, Vogue: We’re not privileged girls who so, like, hate boys
Dear Deepika, great hair and exposed bra strap are not empowerment
Dear Vogue and Deepika: Empowerment is not just a word to be hurled at men
What most viewers objected to was the script that Padukone narrated:
“Remember the bindi on my forehead, the ring on my finger, adding your surname to my name, they are all ornaments. They can be replaced, my love for you cannot. So treasure that."
“To be a size zero or a size fifty. To use cotton and silk to trap my soul is to believe you can halt the expansion of the universe. You are my choice. I am not your privilege.”
“My choices are like my fingerprints. They make me unique.”
“To have sex before marriage, to have sex outside of marriage. My choice.”
“I am the tree. Not the forest. I am not the snowflake. I am the snowfall. You are the snowflake. I am the universe. Infinite in every direction.”
To “love temporarily, or lust forever”.
“My Body, My Mind, My Choice.”
“To have your baby or not - my choice."
It ends with: "I am the universe. That is my choice."
On the other end of the spectrum, are male versions of ‘My Choice’ bashing up Padukone’s enactment. Some are humourous, while others are masochistic acts trying to get even with every word uttered in the video. Perhaps the best of the follow-ups is the ‘Respect2Protect’ documentary film released by mensxp.com, featuring Virat Kohli, Ravi Shastri and Suresh Raina.
The writers and bloggers and social media users were critical of how Deepika moved, what she wore and how her hair blew up horizontally! In the midst of all that criticism, the core message was lost.
But as pop author Shobhaa De summed it up: “[T]his is Vogue. It is a high-end global fashion magazine. Brand Vogue promotes and projects glamour that blinds. Period.”
She calls it “an existential, experimental video, meant for highly evolved aesthetes who speak a different language and live on another planet.”
All that’s fine. But let’s come down to the basic question: what is empowerment? If we go by the books, it means the right to decide for yourself and be responsible for it.
This is Vogue’s wake up call to all its readers, irrespective of whether they are men or women. This is director Homi Adjania’s aesthetic approach to the cause. And, it is Deepika’s choice to endorse it.
If you don’t agree with the message, it is your choice to critique it. But by no means should you rubbish the cause altogether. Whatever the outcome, Vogue did manage to catch a few million eyeballs with this video, as is reflected by the number of views.
The best parody, or should I call ‘recall value’, of this video was projected in the Govinda mash-up of ‘Meri Marzi’.
Yeah right, this is my choice. What’s yours?