Romanticized Objectification of Females - by Syed Haris Ali
- Muzna Amina 24090015
- Jul 6, 2021
- 2 min read
Pakistani and Indian songs for so long using very disturbing lines in the lyrics of their songs. The appreciation and normalization of these hazardous words and lines is an alarming situation for all of us.
Take the example of Hardy Sandu song where the female character is shown as so dependent and cheap as to ask her boyfriend for a pair of shoes. The song is so disturbing that it goes to say that if you will not love you can die, and the girl is kept on insisting him to buy her a pair of shoes rather than accepting her proposal. The portrayal of females as Gold Diggers in songs like these has affected the thinking of most of the growing teenagers of our society. Every now and then we see males complaining about spending their money on their girlfriends and then portraying her Gold diggers. This sort of mindset has inculcated in our society deeply that we see appreciation of such songs. The song clearly shows that male character is a stalker and is constantly following the girl. These kinds of foolish and questionable concepts being portrayed in our society through the media must be taken care of. The injection of these bad songs must be stopped and censored.
Another song by Badshah where he goes so far as to say that “Jahan se hona Chahey Wahin se hi hai tu thik”. The line is so disturbing and objectifies the body of the female character in the song. These kinds of toxic songs where the sole purpose of the song is to point towards sex and stereotyping the body of females as some kind of object. The use of 100 plus models in a single shot of song to tell how cheap they can acquire a female. We have seen in the videos of many Bollywood songs where the man out of nowhere starts singing and 100 females would come from nowhere to stereotype that man has so many options and he can dance with anyone he wants to.
Lastly, an old song which is considered as one of the most listened to songs of Bollywood “Tu Cheez Bari hai Mast Mast”. This song is pointing towards the body of the females where the lyricist of the Song Udit Narayan straight away sexualizes and objectifies the females. The song is played at various wedding ceremonies and one can clearly see the discomfort on the face of the females.
These songs and lyricists through the use of media clearly objectified and sexualized the females that instead should be respected and treated as humans.
It's the justification for the male behavior that's particularly disturbing. We could achieve alot by simply accepting that what is happening is wrong and not a "normal" part of what it means to be a woman. The road to change begins with awareness. Until we acknowledge the wrongs of our past, we cannot start paving the way to a brighter future
I think the main issue is that it is men who are constantly producing their own fantasies while also bringing down women in the same sequence. Asim Azhar's Tum Tum also shows women to be gold diggers and really just brings women down
it's so shocking when you're listening to these songs and stop to focus on the lyrics. makes you wonder what the writers were thinking and why they even thought this was okay to say. but this is so deeply embedded in our culture that it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
I think when we speak of art revolving around women's sexuality, what matters the most to me is that whose perspective is the art centred from, and to which audiences is it meant to relate to?
You mentioned censoring these songs. I value freedom of speech so I think that censoring them might not be the way to go