The Cleavage Of Consent Between Bollywood's Leading Ladies And Their Voyeurs

Objectifying Deepika Padukone without her consent has implications far beyond Bollywood: It endangers every single Indian girl and woman.

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I remember laughing out loud the first time I watched the music video for "Sheila Ki Jawani." I remember being taken aback by Katrina Kaif – per usual a paragon of all things sexy – thrusting herself at me with her midriff and cleavage and legs deliberately bared, while simultaneously telling me, emphatically and with no room for doubt, that she knows I want it but I'm never gonna get it. I'm never gonna get her body. I remember delightedly grappling with the cognitive dissonance Sheila created, her tongue firmly in cheek.

"Main tere haath na aani" sounded to me like an empowering and explicit withholding of consent. And to see it sung by a scantily clad, pelvic-thrusting woman was to be told: Look, I can be as overtly sexual and "immodest" as I want to and still not grant you any further physical permissions.

I remember getting predictably addicted to the criminally catchy tune, but remaining pleasantly surprised by the very, very progressive message I perceived: Sheila will allow you some access to her body. Sheila will flaunt her body. Sheila will be totally thrilled for you to look at her body. But anything you do with Sheila's body will be decidedly, nonnegotiably on Sheila's terms. Don't even think about assuming otherwise.

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In this morning's Times of India, Pooja Bedi made the argument that Deepika Padukone, along with the rest of Bollywood's leading ladies, has herself to blame for the culture of media-driven objectification that she is now vehemently protesting.

"If admiring and focusing on a woman's assets is a crime, all item numbers should be banned," Bedi wrote.

This comes in response to Padukone's livid (and now famous) assertion this past weekend that the media's objectification of her is disrespectful to women. This was specifically with regard to the Times of India article "OMG: Deepika Padukone's Cleavage Show!" that highlighted Padukone's cleavage in a surreptitiously taken video from a trailer launch event. "YES!I am a woman.I have breasts AND a cleavage! You got a problem!!??" Padukone tweeted. "YOU don't know how to RESPECT Women!"

While India's Twitterati and tinseltown alike came forth quickly in her support, critics were just as ready. And, picking eagerly at low-hanging fruit, many were quick to cite item songs in the argument that Bollywood's ladies are themselves complicit in the media's thirsty, relentless objectification of them. You've made your bed, Deepika, now strike a provocative pose and be gawked at in it.

The argument – which Bedi perched herself at the helm of this morning – seems to be that by consenting to being ogled at and exposed in certain contexts, these women have granted permission to their audiences to do so all the time.

Logically, Bedi's argument is sound. "If admiring and focussing on a woman's assets is a crime," then by all means, ban item numbers. Ban the fashion industry. Ban most means of money-making, really.

But here's the catch: Admiring and focusing on a woman's assets is not a crime. Doing so without her consent is. Doing anything to her body without her consent is, be that eve-teasing, harassment, rape, or circulating a particular video or photograph of her to millions of people who wouldn't otherwise have had access to it (the latter-most being a crime that Jennifer Lawrence and several of her Hollywood contemporaries famously fell prey to just a few days ago).

This isn't to say that item songs, a still problematic mainstay of Indian cinema, are absolved of their many, many flaws. They glorify objectification; they are a shameless money-making assault on good storytelling; they are usually just terrible music. But, for all their shortcomings, they have absolutely nothing to do with how the women starring in them should be treated when removed from their very particular context. To argue otherwise is to make the very dangerous assumption that every minor provision of consent can be extend