We watched the newly viral women’s empowerment video that Vogue released recently. Right off the bat, it felt wrong that it was written, directed and produced by men because we are running out of women writers and filmmakers, right? It also hurt when they put Zoya Akhtar in the video because she’s written, directed and said it all and so much better than this “empower” video even if you only watched the last scene from her debut film Luck By Chance.
Nevertheless, we took a leap of faith because every now and then even a man can hit one outta the stadium. But then when we couldn’t get past the rhetoric, we decided to read into the video, just in case, y’know, we missed any subtext. Here is what we heard.
My black and white. My slow-motion. My choice.
To use the words naked and body and soul and spirit.
To sound like deep in a diamond ad.
My choice to not talk about anything real that I do
But everything that I do that associates me with you,
And your life as a man. Your baby, not mine.
What you can and what you can not.
My choice to say the words sex and lust and bindi,
Reinstating the stereotype of minxy and brown.
To think of pregnancy as size 50 because
An actual fat woman could only be in a #VogueCower video.
My choice to not talk about my work, my job, my career,
My medical problems, my everyday discriminations
But instead to talk about how I could be into girls.
My choice to abuse poetic license like a blogger
who has just discovered the oxymoron,
My choice to make you think of me as a goddess
infinite, unattainable, all powerful, apathetic.
My choice to be the other in your fantasies.
My black and white. My full HD. My slow-motion.
Wake up. You have loose motion.