The Woman Beyond The Cleavage

They would have seen a woman who never asks to be dissected like an inanimate object even if she is wearing a short skirt, a blouse that reveals a cleavage, famous or not or if she poses for a calendar, a magazine cover, or wraps herself around a pole for reasons best known to her or plays a bar dancer in a movie or is a bar dancer. Despite all of this, her eyes will  reveal that she is afraid of being pounced upon, either verbally or physically. That she flinches when people call her names or denude her of dignity that has little do with her body but a lot with her sense of self.  A sense of self that even animals are born with and would do anything to defend. That even a child has even though she is not aware of her body.

They would see that no living being ever says, “I am open to violation…come and degrade me.” And that no one can presume that they have a right to violate a woman just because she is famous and must learn to “live with it.”

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They would see that a woman in the end is a person who is asking for just one thing. To be treated as a person with boundaries, choices, a right to her profession, her body, her arms, her legs and yes, her cleavage. And even if she is in the public eye but does not want her body parts circled or pointed at by an arrow in print or digital media, the intrusive ravenous cameras, sensational headlines and unethical editors should beat a retreat. And say sorry. At least once.

 with The New Indian Express  Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of  Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and  where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and  just be.