First Deepika, now Shabana: Why can't videos on empowerment treat women right?

Tis the season for women empowerment videos. First came the #VogueEmpower debacle. Now we have a more politically correct version anchored by Shabana Azmi, and put out -- in response? -- by the non-profit organization Creative Services Support Group as part of its "Year of the Woman" initiative.First the good news: It is a vast improvement on Vogue's widely panned offering. There is no gibberish about "snowflakes" or medusa-inspired glamour shots. Also: the aam aurat gets a speaking part, as opposed to being reduced to a photo montage. In fact, it is she who rescues this video from the "glamour PSA" (Public Service Announcement) handicap -- the 'beautiful people' crutch that seems to be a must for any social consciousness-raising campaign.[caption id="attachment_2186247" align="alignleft" width="380"] A screengrab from the video.[/caption]The video, thanks to the extended space given to real women in the real world, offers meaning and inspiration in spades. (I urge you to listen to them. They have a lot to say, and all of it is important.)This achievement, however, raises an unwelcome question: Why in the world did CSSG dedicate the first third of its video to an array of mostly minor female celebrities, mouthing the words of other women?Lushin Dubey kicks off the first act by literally voice-acting an anonymous letter to the world written for a CSSG workshop, and is followed by a stream of lesser known, but almost universally pretty faces orating bits of a Maya Angelou poem -- And Still I Rise -- in sequence. Does none of this make sense? Well, watching the video won't help in that area. Nor the fact that almost all the women seem to be trying way too hard, the tone is over-dramatic and over-mannered. They declaim, proclaim, orate rather than simply speak.But just when the viewer is ready to roll her eyes, and click away, on come the real stars of this production: the woman who raised herself without any family support on the streets, the one who wants to become a police officer, and the other who explains in broken English why she loves playing football. The words are simple, spoken from the heart, and carry the weight of experience. The bracing blast of authenticity offers a stark contrast to the school-play hamming that plagues the segment before. It indeed makes the heart rise to hear the strong, unapologetic voices and faces of the Indian woman.I would like to share their names with you, but CSSG oddly fails to include that information. Each person in the "celebrity" segment is carefully identified by profession and name. A privilege apparently denied to the ordinary Indian woman. It cannot be an issue of anonymity as their faces are out there for the world to see. The video is unwittingly divided into two parts: women whose names matter, and women who don't.The contrast is likely unintentional. But it isn't any less damning in revealing the instinctive elitism that besets even the best-intentioned efforts. Hey CSSG, maybe -- crazy thought -- the first step to empowering women is to honour their individuality? What is a point in highlighting their voices and stories, if their very identity is erased into a generic 'aam aurat' category. Surely, Shabana with her feminist credentials and knowledge should have caught that straight off the script.The celebrities undergo a different kind of erasure. Where the Common (Wo)man is given the space to speak her truth about her life, the Aditi Rao Hydaris and Konkona Sens and Riddhima Kapoors are reduced to attractive voice models who mouth other people's words. It affirms the popular and wrong-headed prejudice that sexism is not an issue for upper class women who are presumed to live fabulous privileged lives unfettered by patriarchy. What meaningful stories could they possibly tell of their lives, what battles could they possibly have fought? They are just pretty faces pulled in to "sell" the message, no different than Katrina Kaif hawking that orange-coloured drink.This presumption is especially astounding given that some of the most powerful, headline-making media moments in Bollywood have been powered by actresses getting real, be it Deepika Padukone about her depression or Kangana Ranaut about the struggles of small town girl. The video could have made the far braver and inspiring choice of pulling together the diverse authentic voices of all kinds of Indian women, rich, poor, middle class, speaking their truth. That would have been something.Taken together, the Vogue and CSSG videos reveal the irredeemable inanity of the current template of PSAs which imitate the celeb endorsement model. Find one big star, add in a bunch of good looking high society folks, wrap them as pretty packaging around cause of choice. The result does no justice to either the star (poor Deepika!) or the cause -- or in this case, the Indian woman who is treated as an unattractive product that has to be prettied up with a dash of glamour to be made more palatable. (Which is a bit rich since the aam aurats contribute the only worthwhile moments in the CSSG video)Dear good intentioned people: It's time to figure out how to empower women without erasing their humanity. And let's hold off on the videos until we do.