Why Dia Mirza's Pregnancy Announcement Needs To Be Celebrated, Not Trolled

Dia Mirza pregnant after marriage in February, so what? Actor Dia Mirza announced on April 2 that she is expecting her first child with her husband Vaibhav Rekhi. She also shared a pregnancy photograph where she can be seen cradling her baby bump. However, the troll army of social media is subjecting Mirza to immense trolling following her announcement.

Why? Because she and Rekhi got married in February this year. So how can she be so heavily pregnant just 1.5 months into her marriage? The real question though should be, why are we so narrow-minded that anyone who doesn't abide by the outdated and traditional timeline of "adarsh" adult life must be subjected to crass jokes and social shaming?

Here are five reasons why Dia Mirza's pregnancy announcement need not be trolled but celebrated: 

1. Marriage has little to do with pregnancy: Pregnancy comes naturally to our bodies, whereas marriage is a man-made bond that we subject ourselves to, to ensure fidelity and life-long commitment from a partner. Nothing wrong with a life-long commitment, if made on a template of equal rights for each partner, but pregnancy and the decision to bring a child into this world is something that we have force-fitted into this scheme of things. Many celebrities in the West have children first and get married later, but in India sadly, couples are expected to commit for a lifetime and only then have children. Why is that so?

2. Breaking stigma around women's sex lives: Yes, unmarried women have sex, and that sometimes results in pregnancy even if you use protection. The reason why Mirza's pregnancy is being shamed is because it implies that she was sexually active with her partner before marriage and got pregnant and we are clearly so immature and adult women having sex outside of marriage still comes across as scandalous to us.

3. She had the guts to come out with the news: Dia Mirza has been around on social media for some time now. She knows how it works. Which means she must have known that breaking the news about her pregnancy would lead to trolling. And yet, instead of hiding the news and waiting it out till she had a child and then weaving a story around it, she disclosed her pregnancy. Isn't that a brave decision? Her guts to come out with the news knowing that she may be shamed viciously by a section of social media is worth celebrating on its own.

4. No age to start your journey as a mom: The 39-year-old former Miss Asia Pacific is one of the many women who are embracing motherhood later in their life. Women are often advised to have children in their 20s. But with more and more women choosing to focus on their career and waiting for the right partner to settle down with, we are seeing increasing numbers of late pregnancies. Like Kishwer Merchant, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Anita Hassanandani this year, Mirza too has proved that the right age to embrace motherhood is whenever you are ready for it and not when society wants you to do so.

5. Can we stop putting other people's lives under a microscope? We as a society have this mean tendency of putting women's lives under a microscope, especially for all the wrong reasons. A woman marrying late, or choosing to stay childless, or getting pregnant before marriage has her life scrutinised by everyone around her, be it colleagues, family or complete strangers. What gives anyone a right to demean a woman, in fact any person, for the choices they make in life. Why do we have this insatiable urge to pass a verdict of good or bad, successful or failure and ideal or characterless on other people? What purpose doe it serve, apart from belittling others in our quest to see ourselves as morally upright and righteous?

We hope that Dia Mirza pays no heed to the negative commentary around her pregnancy and enjoys this phase thoroughly. As for the rest of us, if only it was possible for us to scroll past negative thoughts and mindless shaming of others with a swipe of our index finger.

Image Credit: Dia Mirza/Instagram

The views expressed are the author's own.