The Deepika Padukone Video: Vogue Or Vague?

The viral video starring Deepika Padukone is the third in line for the Vogue Empower campaign by Vogue India. The first two videos for the campaign had a sense of connection attached with them, which was why we were really looking forward to the third instalment.

‘Going Home’ starring Alia Bhatt and directed by Vikas Bahl got us thinking about a perfect society where a woman is not afraid of asking for a lift from a group of strangers in the late hours of the night.

Similarly, ‘Start With The Boys’ starring Madhuri Dixit and directed by Vinil Mathew touched the right chords when it asked the parents to raise boys who don’t make women cry, instead of raising boys who don’t cry.

The third video by Homi Adajania however, talks about the same old topic of liberating women from the cages that our society has created for them. The idea behind the video was to show 99 women in from different walks of life in a 2-minute video. As far as that is concerned, the video looks okay, like many others that have been made on or around the same topic, but if you listen too closely, the video wouldn’t make much sense to a common Indian woman.

The video starts with a sans-makeup Deepika and her frizzy hair, talking about the spirit that can’t be bound in clothes, and the many faces of privileged women dancing contemporary. We also see some known faces, like Adhuna Akhtar, Zoya Akhtar, Scherezade Shroff and Nimrat Kaur.

The makers have talked about women voicing their choice for equality, be it social, political, economic, sexual, and it sounds acceptable if we don’t go in the details, which unfortunately we have to because of Deepika’s constant voice-over in the background without which the video is nothing but a collection of some 90 portraits.

Talking of the details, she demands the equality of having sex without marriage, outside of marriage or not having sex at all.
“Just because you are a woman doesn't mean you can make choices that please you without caring a zilch about people around you. We have never taken responsibilities to protect and provide off men's shoulders so this whole freedom of choice to women just because they are women is nothing but asking freedom to do things that have always been labelled "wrong" when done by men. The effort seems to compete with men at any cost possible. Men and women are differently equal and never completely equal. Choices come with responsibilities. Hope young women realize that. Sex outside marriage isn't a choice but a mockery of relationship you "chose" to get into,” says Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, a young journalist and independent movie maker associated with the issue of fake charges under Section 498A, and we couldn’t agree more.

While we appreciate the sentiments behind women independence, we believe that the video could have actually featured women from all walks of life, and focusing on real problems rather than the controversial demand that we discussed above. To add the portraits of 3-4 tribal women to hint their involvement (and approval) in the demands put forward in the video is misleading to say the least.

Deepika has been winning hearts recently, with her powerful performances on screen and acceptance of suffering from depression in real life. In this video too, she has looked and spoken good, which was all she could have done on her part. Whatever lacks in the video demands a better attempt from the makers the next time, if not an explanation of sort for points like the ones we discussed above.

You can watch the video here



(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation)