Monday, September 22, 2014

Celebrity cleavage in India : Image management online

The latest celebrity scandal in India is a slight variation of the common theme . The country's leading daily (Times of India) did what its been doing forever to boost its Internet traffic - it posted some photos of a leading actress with an arrow pointing to her cleavage and headlined it "OMG, look at the actresses cleavage".

Only in this case, the actress hit back and took to Twitter to call them out. Even wrote a pretty impressive open letter (http://gulfnews.com/about-gulf-news/al-nisr-portfolio/tabloid/cleavage-row-bollywood-actress-deepika-padukone-writes-open-letter-1.1387097)

Pretty run of the mill stuff till we get to the Newspaper's response -  "its ok for us to do it because its the internet and not our physical paper". Their main response beyond saying she's an actress and deserved it is that the only way for them to drive traffic to their online site is through such tactics (bold headlines, pointing arrows, provocative slideshows, etc.). They also say they approach online channels very differently to the standards of their physical paper.

The reason I think it is highly relevant is because reading the news around this made me realize 2 things related to class -
1. Image management online is going to become a significant chore for all of us as it is accepted that people will have loser morals online and will attack you.
2. Attack really is the best form of defense. By attacking first on the issue through twitter, fb and an online blog post, she framed the discussion around her narrative. Searching for either of the 2 parties involved on google now pulls up favourable articles on her for the first 10 posts.

Regards,
Rohan

Some links below :

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/Dear-Deepika-our-point-of-view-/articleshow/43084705.cms

http://scroll.in/article/679127/Deepika-Padukone-hits-back-at-Times-of-India's-objectification-of-women's-bodies/

http://www.dnaindia.com/entertainment/comment-toi-responds-to-deepika-padukone-again-sexism-hypocrisy-and-lack-of-journalistic-ethics-flow-2020554




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