How many times has it happened that you have been interrupted by your sister, mom, any other female relative or a random stranger on the streets to adjust your top because your bra strap is showing? Or how many times have you been asked to wear your skirt low waist because it is a tiny bit above the knee? Countless, isn’t it? To highlight these acts, Elle has come up with a video that shouts out to society to let women be.
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The video starts with two female friends sitting in a place that looks like a restaurant and as soon as a waiter comes to serve their food, one girl gestures to the other to adjust her top as some cleavage is showing. It goes on to show a girl adjusting her kurta because the shape of her thighs is coming across from under her leggings, another girl pulling her top up while exercising because her cleavage shows when she bends, so on and so forth.
Elle India came up with this video titled “Let the girls be...” as part of its #UnGender series in collaboration with WEvolve, a global campaign. This campaign strives to bring men and women together to address gender inequality with the use of art and media.
The video tackles this innate problem of women telling others of their ilk to cover their body up, so men don’t lech at them. Parts that are covered are further layered up because a single layer shows the shape of a certain body part. While this happens with women, men stay free from such apprehensions because their body parts are “considered” attractive enough.
What is the use of such attractiveness that whatever a woman does, she has to be careful to not show any body part or even the shape of it in public?
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It is a shame that even in this day and age, women are asked by their own tribe to cover up because centuries-old suppression by men still continues to haunt them. In most cases, it is not men who underline such gestures and leave hidden signs but women, and one may ask why? And the answer would be because ages ago, it was established by men that a woman’s dignity and goodness of her character lay in her covered body.
Since then, it is our grandmothers who taught our mothers and our mothers passed on the knowledge to us. But it depends on us to break this chain and free women from this constant reminder of keeping our dignity intact through the positioning of our clothes.
Elle has just started the dialogue, now it is our turn to take it forward.
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