Bollywood and women: Why objectification of women in films translates to real-life violence

Bollywood has always been under the line of fire for its portrayal of women as objects of desire. Be it Mandakini, Parveen Babi or the current crop of actresses. From 'Sheila Ki Jawaani' to 'Munni ki Badnaami', it is usually women who are utilized as objects of desire and sexual objects. The situation is no different in Indian culture where birth of a girl child is frowned upon with disdain in some parts of India and shockingly even among elite and educated Indians.

Bollywood is the biggest culprit as the reach and impact by Bollywood films is the most and it is shameful that such an industry still resorts to item songs and objectification of women without analyzing the negating impact on society.

While, a 'Queen' or 'Kahaani' still manages to raise tha bar and pave way for progressive approach to women-centric subjects, there are a dozen others which will still use the skimpy-clothes, trashy and offensive lyrics (most of Honey Singh's songs) to sell tickets and rake in the moolah.

If there has to be a certain sense of change in the way society treats women, even Bollywood needs to change its mentality and embrace subjects about womanhood and feminity without projecting women as a mere object of sexual gratification but as a person of her own with layers.

One Denise Voutou says, " wow.. and here i thought the problem was western culture. i always knew there was extreme violence against women in other parts of the world but i was never really exposed to pop-culture from eastern media (movies,music, ect...). i just never realised objectification of women in media took place there too," in the comments section of the video.

YouTube user Devashish Khattar summed up the entire dogma of Bollywood treating women in bad light and recent incidents of crime as follows, "Being a Delhite I come across reports of brutality against women on a regular basis (and as I pathetic it may sound) I thought I had become numb to it. But I still couldn't even get past the first half of the video. This is appalling and makes me sick to the core. How does one conjure up any hope for our society is beyond me. Makes me want to run away from this place as far as I possibly can?

The spiral-maze of B-Town films

Salman Khan whistles, hoots and leers at his actresses (Wanted) in films and his major chunk of fan-base follows suit.

In Grand Masti, horrendous jokes revolving around sex and women made the rounds. Not only were they cringe-worthy but also negative. But, the film ended up making money and giving rise to increase in number of films.

In Dhoom 3, Katrina Kaif only had a 15-minute run-time where she had to strip down to impress Aamir Khan and dance in skimpy clothes to songs.

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