Celebrity Divorces: Do They Owe Media An Explanation?

Celebrity Divorces: Bollywood film actors, public figures and whoever starts having a decent fan base get bombarded with questions about the their significant others and if there is one.

If they are dating someone or married to someone, their followers on social media and the news organisations always want to what all they did together, what are their future plans, if they want to get married, have kids and everything that is supposed to be nobody's business but the couple.

Would we be comfortable to share such things of personal lives? If not then why do we expect celebrities to do so? Are they not people like us? Does being famous means people can't have a life of their own ?

The whole notion of a public divorce is born of it. Celebrities nowadays release public statements, do interviews and have to explain why they decided to part ways with their partners. This is followed by a flood of tweets, posts and random conjectures about the couple in question.

Women are slut-shamed for being "too friendly" with someone other than their husbands, male celebrities female friends are accused of being home-wreckers. While we comfortably express our opinions about some famous couple's divorce on social media, the couple who is actually going through something has to deal with how everyone else is feeling their personal issues. Does that make sense?It doesn't.

 Here some incidents when divorces of celebrities were put through the media test.

Aamir Khan-Kiran Rao Divorce

On July 3, 2021, Bollywood couple Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao announced their divorce. They released a joint statement saying that after 15 years of being together they have mutually decided to end their marriage life but they will continue being devoted parents to their son Azad. They further said that they will continue working together on several of their joint ventures.

They were not obligated to explain the media but they decided to release a joint statement after their divorce. One would think that people would be sensitive about it and yet trolls didn’t leave a chance to attack the couple. They made several degrading comments like accusing Aamir Khan of ‘love jihad’ and speculating him of having an ‘extramarital affair’ with his co-star Fatima Sana Shaikh.

Malaika Arora-Arbaaz Khan Divorce

Social media and paparazzi don't leave a single chance to comment upon the female actors’ love life. Malaika Arora and Arbaaz Khan separated in the year 2017 after eighteen years of marriage. However, they continue to co-parent their son Arhaan.

Malaika Arora Arjun Kapoor

While people were still not bothering Arbaaz Khan, Malaika Arora faced the absolute worst treatment by fans of the Khan family. She was shamed and humiliated online, people pointed fingers on her character. This took another evil shape when the actor started seeing actor Arjun Kapoor who happens to be younger than her. Some of the backlash was about her dating another man after divorce while others whined about how Arora decided to be with someone younger than her. Why can we let women choose for themselves what they want? Do we hate the idea of a divorce woman being happy so much?

Is it because we can't deal with people ending marriages ?

The word ‘divorce’ is still stigmatised in our Indian society. Even in small circles, people go to great lengths to either make the convince the couple to stay together, if that doesn't work we find a villain between the two. In most heterosexual couples, the woman is seen at fault.

The same thing gets blown out of proportion in media. Social media users are seen overly curious to know who between the two ended things? Was a third person responsible? did any of them cheat on each other? The news media then sees the opportunity to provide answers to these questions to the aching world (don't we have better things to do?).

What follows next can easily be termed as harassment. Fake and real "scoops" start surfacing on the internet, "blind item" like op-eds are printed and the celebrities have a hard time going anywhere without the paparazzi following them.

We need to understand that no matter how famous an individual is and how big their fan army is, they have the right to keep their personal life details to themselves. Their relationships, their divorces, their friendships should not be our concern. Shouldn't being a real fan be about extending support, love and pure admiration?

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