Sriyanshi Bhatt, Week 13

Women in Media- Gender Policing in Mainstream Hindi Cinema: A Decade of Central Female Characters in Top-Grossing Bollywood Movies

 The sheer power of media and the advertisement industry to influence the minds of its targeted audience is formidable. They can establish and normalize traits out of thin air, from associating colours and certain fragrances to a particular gender to the type of role that gender “needs” to perform in the society. Creating gender stereotypes through printed images, caricatures, advertising propaganda, and even written content can be traced back to the severely biased, sexist ads of the 1950s in the United States of America. 

This stereotyping is heavily concentrated on defining and redefining what the “ideal woman” is. Throughout the centuries, this illusion of the definition is moulded and forced down these pipelines like sources of domestic water; essential and integral for the general society to function. Bollywood, has become just another source to reinforces these stereotypes. This is argued by the Subuhi Khan in her paper and after thorough data analysis, have come to the conclusion that, “Women in Bollywood films experienced better life outcomes when they complied with prescriptive gender norms.” Even though the author recognises the “globalisation” of these women as career oriented, beyond the devout wife prototype, the adherence to the narrow block of feminine ideals is strongly present, and would not be a matter of contestation if other representations were also present. But sadly, this isn’t the case.