Gender Equality in Fashion is must: Emma Watson

We have all grown up having an ideal image of an enigmatic man, tall, dark and handsome, knight in shining armour kind, while a woman as an epitome of beauty, petite, soft spoken, kind and well always in distress. It amuses me how we inherit this biases as a product of our upbringing. However, its time we question rather challenge this perpetuated sexist ideology deep rooted in our society.

The UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador is back with their HeForShe campaign with Emma Watson to encourage gender equality in the fashion industry. It was launched last year with the purpose to involve both men and women in revolutionising the discrepancies in the industry. The voyeuristic representation of women against the protagonist hero is not gender quality.

Women in industry are affected by issues like unfair pay, body diversity and their representation in the mainstream. In the Vogue U.K Video “ Fashion on Gender Equality: A conversation with Emma Watson,” she discusses the need for gender equality in fashion with eminent  designers like Stella MS Carney, Jonathan Saunders and Erdem Moralioglu.

Answering to one of her question regarding the biggest problem faced by women in fashion today, Mc Cartney said, “I think the fashion industry has a very big role to play. It has a huge voice and the voice can be adapted. We need to give a better message to women of all ages, all sizes and all nationalities . We need to allow women to feel comfortable in who they are”.

Well, this also means that men deserve paternal leave as much as women need maternity leave. However, things have definitely evolved over the time. There have been various change in the way industry look at women today. However there is still lot of racism and sexism adulterating the industry. “I’d really, really love to see a more diverse representation of women and men in anyway that makes them feel empowered,” said Emma in the Video. One cannot agree more on this!

Although one needs to understand that men and women co-exist in the society, for empowering one you don’t need to downcast the other.

Photo Credit: cdni.condenast.co.uk