Aaradhya Bachchan’s bangs have gone. But a new problem has arisen. Her video at the Ambani family pre-wedding celebrations in Jamnagar has gone viral. And sexual predators online are now talking about her new ‘game’ and calling her ‘bhabhi’. She is just 12. This is bordering on paedophilia. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
The comments on social media about her show how it’s become normal to sexualise children. Comments like ‘maa se beti crush updated’ to another questioning why she didn’t dress up like this previously, and others saying she looks ‘stunning’ show how Indian men have to sexualise everything.
The sexually charged comments have caused outrage on social media, with many users—mostly women—calling out the men for their inappropriate behaviour.
“This guy doesn’t know the difference between complimenting and sexualizing,” said one user.
But even when called out, the men have been incorrigible. When her age was pointed out by one user, another responded by saying “Anything above 3 works”.
Aaradhya Bachchan has been subject to scrutiny since her first public appearance. First, it was about her hairstyle and her clutching onto her mother. Then, people made fun of her saying could finally see her face when reels of her performance at a school play went viral. And now, they’re sexualising her.
No child deserves this. And it’s not limited to her. Almost all celebrity children have been subject to public scrutiny. Before she started her acting career, Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana Khan was trolled for being too ‘dark’ and looking like a man. This is the same scrutiny that has followed Ajay Devgn and Kajol’s 20-year-old daughter Nysa Devgan since she was a teen.
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Shielding children
It’s little wonder then that many celebrities go to great lengths to protect their children’s privacy. Hollywood star couple Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling do not share images of children on social media. “Since my children are still so little and don’t understand what posting their image really means, I don’t have their consent. And I won’t post their image until they’re old enough to give me consent,” Mendes wrote in a 2020 post.
But keeping their children’s images off social media hasn’t stopped Indian men from making crass and often abusive comments. Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma have diligently kept their three-year-old daughter from the public eye. Yet in 2021, when India lost the T20 World Cup match against Pakistan, angry commentators on Twitter threatened to rape her; she was nine months old at the time.
Social media has only magnified this problem,
It’s easy to call for government intervention. When a woman is raped, we take out protests, hold candlelight vigils, make stronger laws and introduce the death penalty. But it’s equally important back to the basics—at school and at home.
Parents should teach their children to respect women and practise it themselves. Teachers should introspect and talk about this in classrooms. Perhaps then, a generation of Indian men will grow up to be respectable human beings.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)