Objectification of Women

Hello Boys n Men!! Today am "preaching" on objectification of "your" women in "our" today's world. And before writing anything, I just want to say that for me objectification goes much further than Sexy pictures.

कोई भी विज्ञापन या फिर गानों में आप खुद ही देखते कैसे लड़कियों को पेश किया जाता है। "Item", "पटाखा", "माल"... और भी बहुत से ऐसे "उपनाम" हमारी ही "सभ्यता और संस्कृति" की उपज है। कभी "सुराहीदार गर्दन", "नागिन/बादलों से काले बाल", "हिरन की चाल" जैसी खूबियों से स्त्रियों की खूबसूरती को बताया जाता था। अब आज जब तक हर चीज़ में बाज़ारवाद न घुसाया जाये, लोगों को वह पसंद नही आते। इसलिए स्त्रिओं को आज सिर्फ भोग-विलास के लिए दिखाया जाता है क्यूँकी उनको विषय-वस्तु बना दिया गया है। कोई भी विज्ञापन देखिये और उसमे पुरुष और स्त्री के परिधान पर गौर कीजिये फिर आप खुद स्वीकारेंगे। अगर किसी sofa-set के विज्ञापन में आपको एक लड़की छोटे, तंग और कम कपड़ों में नज़र आएगी तो men's deo के लिए भी उन्हें ऐसे ही दिखाया जायेगा।

Now if we refer English Grammar, we have studied that when a subject is Active, then an object is passive. For e.g. "Lucy stroked the cat"; so here subject is Lucy and the object is Cat. But in society, the subject and object statuses are gendered. Men are granted subject status, the vast majority of time and so women are severely objectified. As a result of this, the cumulative effect is that we are socializing generation to view the world, from the point of view of men. On a large scale, it's society that treats women as an object. Just recall any case of male violence or sexual abuse, and you can see that everyone start looking from men's point of view : "oh, he must have been provoked to do that", "he must've been confused by her signals". कोई भी rape cases आप उठा कर देखलो, हर मामले में सिर्फ लड़कियों को दोष दिया जाता है, सिर्फ उनपर ही अंकुश लगाने की बात होती रहती है। Even so called "Gentleman" when speak out on violence against women, tell other men to imagine her as "somebody's wife/mother" but it never comes into their mind that maybe, just maybe, a woman is also "somebody".

In today's time, women are objectified in more profound ways than we realize. Magazines like "Playboy" claims "celebrating women's beauty" but it never post pictures of "Women". What it does in fact is to "celebrate" a portion of the female gender to appeal to male eyes. आप किसी भी मशहुर painter की paintings उठा के देख लीजिये...कोई भी painting जिसमे स्त्री को आधे-नँगे कपड़ों में दिखाया गया होता है, वही अच्छे दामों पर बिकी मिलेगी। तो हो गया न व्यवसायीकरण...! The difference between the way any men and women are portrayed is quite stark in society. Just refer any children's book and you can see that everytime male characters outnumber female ones. This pattern also continues in children's TV shows also where only a third of lead characters are girls. The vast majority of films also tell stories with women as girlfriend/wives/mothers, and women centric movies accounts mere 5-7%. It's a common refrain for men about not understanding women, but this is because they never tried, because that's how society has trained them. It is really an important issue and we really need to look how deeply objectification of women really goes; and at present we must certainly combat this objectification. In coming days, we must entwined shred of the patriarchy for women, so that they could also be recognized and treated as human beings..!

Content: Abhilekh Dwivedi