My Take on This Year’s Bigg Boss: Victory of Sanskari Women?

The most mysterious and sought-after voice “Bigg Boss’s voice” in Indian Television, announced on the finale episode that this season was one of the most successful seasons. True that this was one of the seasons which made a lot of buzz! Within this season, Shilpa Shinde (Winner) and Hina Khan (Runner) attracted a lot of attention.  There were two different factions that supported these two leading ladies. Though they both ruled the Indian serial scenario acting as the perfect woman, both of them had fans in the show for different reasons.

One observation was that people have expectations from celebrities to behave like their reel characters that they portrayed on-screen. Hina Khan was the perfect Sanskari Woman for about eight years on-screen and the audience had a similar expectation. Hina was in an altogether different avatar from her character as “Akshara from Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai”. She was upfront, non-sacrificing, not adjusting, opinionated and quite daring. She was not the usual type of women the society approves of. And she performed all her tasks and fared better than the men (she proved no less in Khatron Ke Khiladi).

Hina was considered a strong player by almost everyone in the game. All of the above-mentioned qualities of her were sent to the back foot with Shilpa Shinde’s fervour in the Kitchen.  She was a non-performer compared to rest of the players and was mostly seen in the kitchen.

We all respect food and the person who makes it but was that enough to claim the title? Not denying the fact that she was strong and played a very smart game but the overemphasize placed on the cooking part is sort of disturbing.

Simran Khosla, 19, an ardent Bigg Boss follower, says, “Being in my teen, I connected with Hina who was upright, bold and fearless. She stood up for what she felt was right and did not give up. To see men considering her as the most difficult contestant to beat, it was indeed inspiring. An eye-opener to a lot of women who still think that they are inferior to men. While I really liked Shilpa Shinde on the show, the accentuation of her as the mother who cooked and fed was cliché.  It’s sad how the society still thinks and glorifies that women should cook, feed and takes care. It’s not true. Rather this should be done by both the sexes. Glorification of confinement of women to the kitchen was something I did not like and would never do so”.

It’s unfortunately true that women are made to feel inferior if they cannot be the perfect women as ascribed by the society. There is an overwhelming representation of the same on popular media, especially Indian soaps.

Indian soaps are full of such stereotypical representation. Right from clothing, accessories, behaviour to almost everything is tiptop. These are subtle ways of imposing certain path for women to follow.

It’s perfectly normal to be a fashionista, an opinionated person, bold and fearless. We are all not meant to be confined to four walls but rather break all the barriers to reach as far as we can.

Pic Credit: Hindustan Times

Also Read: After the Success of #MeToo in 2017 What’s Next for Feminism?

Reshma is an intern with SheThepeople.TV