I think magazines like Maxim should be banned.
This should be tolerated and The Times of India also post titiliating stuff many times but they do it cleverly.

Sorry guys,

I meant to say, "This shouldn't be tolerated."

Cheers, Rohit

this is outrageous!!!!!!!!

it was bad enough what they printed, but what makes me hit the roof is what they had to say in their defense!!!

“We respect and celebrate women in our magazine. We never intended to offend Khushboo and apologise to her.”

“overall light read for men.”

Is this the kind of SICK sense of humour that men have that they find this abhoring picture and caption a "light read"???? and whats this that they didnt mean to offend her??? so were they expecting this charming picture along with the lovely captions to get her marriage proposals???

You said it Anusheh - WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM INDEED???

Obviously the editor and the publisher have got a very twisted and distorted sense of humour. I sympathize with their pathetic attempt to publicize their magazine.

Having read more than my share of these magazines in the US, all I can say is ' Welcome to the global village!'

nice post anusheh...i believe a swamp is necessary for the flowering of the lotus...maybe we are going through a lot of surfacing of all that is unaesthetic for its healing to manifest...nature works in myriad ways and chaos has in it the seeds of new creations...to me, there is underlying battle on between forces of love and joy and beauty on oneside and fear induced squalor on the other...they say all publicity is good publicity and "maybe" we have played into the magazine's hands by our reactions...they have achieved what they sought to achieve through some increase in volume sales...and so many wwho had never heard of them like me now know they exist...sad but true...
forces of light will create their own spaces and drive off the darkness manifests...

How strange is that Sundar. We both posted at exactly the same time:-) Wise words indeed. Well, at the end of the day its all really about making 'informed choices'. If after reading a piece like this people still want to go ahead and contribute to Maxims sales then more power to them. You're right ugliness rises so that light can do its work.....the least one can do is provide people with alternative ways of seeing and knowing in the hope that the path to light becomes a little clearer.

did we :)

Hi Anusheh,

Sorry, havent been able to write here before. But my reaction after reading the piece was no different than what has been expressed by everyone already. And I have to say that Shalini's comment is closest to what I feel right now. I truly hope that their karma fixes their yin ASAP!!!

Welcome to the Blog Masale.Wallah!

Thats quite something!!! i didnt know of this mag until now. it really puts me off to think that guys like these give all the men a bad name!!! i am sick of hearing girls say "you are all the same!!!". now they have something new to poke us with!!!!!

this is really very unfair. but anyways, whats wrong is wrong. this was really in bad taste.

Anusheh,

this is surprising. isnt there a central regulatory board that decides in the content in such magazines? if there is...then I wonder how did they bungle up.

I think Khushboo should win the case for it is unnecessary assault on someones integrity. I wonder how Sunil Mehra would feel if someone attacked his integrity such.

Dear Aachi

Probably no censor board exists for magazines considering the kind of trash which gets printed regularly. But I really dont know. Yes I too often wonder how men would react if something like this was printed about them. Say it was Shahrukh Khan instead of Khushboo, then what would have happened? Interesting how you never see men being compromised like this.

love
anusheh

Anusheh, you are dot on, it is all a tiring mess now. Reacting to it once, I spoke to a powerful and influential editor, and asked why he had to print such gore and filth; sometimes bang on the front page with screeching, melodramatic or trashy headlines. His reply was succinct - it sells my paper. It mattered little beyond that. We've had countless arguments since then, and I've always wondered when will we be able to harness the true potential of communication tools such as the all pervasive media.

Each one of us can make a difference. By making that critical choice. Asking ourselves as much, as often as we can. how and what are we as individuals, groups, stakeholders contributing to the environment around us. People are speaking up; right here, you and the team have made a very conscious much needed effort, trying to raise the bar through debate and dialogue.

Its heartening to read Kiran Karnik's piece on the vision of a "civilized India", or Narayan Murthy say that when we pick up the newspaper every morning we must feel like we are a nation on the move.. CNN IBN's State of the Nation programme asked critical questions and Barkha Dutt's "We the people" addressing transgender sexuality issues in a sensitive and open manner was heartening too.

Civil society must come of age now, and to me the first step is right here with ourselves. From disappointment to disgust and silence, I've come to point where I believe completely in working towards bringing as many alternatives upfront, using tools of communication to do so, so that atleast some people, even if very limited, are enabled to make an informed choice.. elsewhere you said every drop makes the ocean deeper..

Kudos, all strength to you, and endurance, because sometimes this fight feels endless and yet we cannot give up. Was it a Peter Gabriel song "don't give up", and was the album called "be"... well that's a little mixed up perhaps..

Hi Anusheh, that was such a great piece, very hard and sharp and I really do appreciate it. Funny, just yesterday someone brought over a copy of the magazine to show us - her friends - so we could all be outraged together. It really is pathetic as it perhaps always has been... its just that there are so many more ways to see and express it now... also think youre absolutely right when you say that srk would never be compromised such... maxim has done it for the same reasons men have done things like this for generations - because they know they can get away with it.

Shubhohsree, Anusheh,
Feel like narrating & sharing some of the insane things I do, when I cannot tolerate obscenity and crudeness, and then my fuse blows.. and a lot of people hate me for it.

The bhangra trend was just catching on and Daler Mehndi was all set to perform in Bhubaneshwar, an open air concert. our gang wanted to go to the concert and the onus fell on me to get the tickets. Mcdowell's was the show host and organizer. When I went to get the tickets, I learnt that tickets were coming with a bottle of whisky and were not for sale otherwise. So I asked them if there were arrangements for people who didn't consume alchohol, would they be forced to buy whisky just because they were keen to go to the concert (such events/concerts were rare). the response i got was sorry, passes come with the alcohol. My fuse blew, it was a Friday afternoon, and the concert was on the following sunday. I wrote a protest letter to all the local editors and radio/tv newsrooms, took it to the media that evening, and my friends all joined me in the exercise. By the next evening, the protest had become a full fledged one. Outcome was, though the performers landed in the city, they were unable to get to the venue; the concert was called off, mcdowell couldn't sell all those bottles and we didn't hear Daler Mehndi sing.

While there was a small community who stood together, the magnitude of numbers that hated us for depriving them was astounding. Personally, the incident taught me great lessons.

great story sukanya...i love these stories of everyday rebellions... reminds me of a quote i copied into my diary years ago "...when the torch of revolution is carried through a crowd there are bound to be some singed beards.."

Maya and Sukanya

Thanks. Truly civil society needs to come of age but I wonder if it really ever does when it comes to degrading and humiliating women; specifically for sexual pleasure/titillation. I dont think we have any examples before us to rely on.

Sukanya this is a really cliched response that your editor friend gave. I've heard the same responses when we were working in Pakistan trying to get newspapers to stop sensationalising/sexualising reports of child sexual abuse. I dont believe that people read newspapers to get turned on. Its just easy to pass on the buck.

That was a great story Sukanya. One persons rebellion can go a long way in bringing about change.

Nice quote Maya.

Just to share s0mething. A few days ago Barkha Dutt did her 'We the People' in Chennai. Khushboo was there as were vice chancellors of Chennai Univ, students(scores of them) Jayanti Natrajan, BJP leaders, city personalities etc. In Barkha's words it was the largest audience in any metro ever. The Khushboo controversy was an important debate, as was the dress code recently enforced in colleges and the 'obscenity' issue around the disco on New Year's etc. Basically the point being on how conservative and morally uptight Chennai was.

Well lo and behold everyone unanimously backed Khushboo and her right to voice her opinions, dress code was a little tricky but as many voices were liberal and against it as anyhwere else and everyone decried the moral police/political fundamentalism etc in the disco and kissing issue.

The question of course, which Khusboo also raised rightly was, were were these people then? However I feel even if it was the spotlight of the cameras, the desire to swing with the popular sentiment of the show etc it is indeed a critical point. Many more voices are needed in the chaos of an India in transition to balance and provide the 'other' point of view. The silent majority needs self-expression and a more sanguine, wholesome and democratic view point is a powerful need of the day.

Of course Barkha's no-nonsense clarity between the retrograde and the inclusive makes a huge difference to how her programs progress. Few anchors display her clarity of thought and perspective and the wish-wash of their commentors is reflective of the same.

Creating that critical mass of thought, to move people to an expansive way of being is perhaps the greatest contribution we can all make today. Voices like this blog, for instance, need to persevere along hoping to provide that 'difference/space/contemplation' for the nascent ones, who feel swamped by the overwhelming howls of the retrograde and the intolerant.

No matter how many times one has to speak out against what is unacceptable, one must find the courage and clarity to do so.

Bravo Sukanya!

I think the only way to begin some sort of a revolution against these magazines is to boycott them completely. just dont buy. That should register in their heads if nothing else does. If money is what they understand then money is what we talk!

interesting shares here...

jasjit, maybe khushboo could be a voice from the south on this blog...she has a huge fan following with even temples consecrated to her!!

Not sure how much of that club remains now sundar :)

:)fan clubs have a tendency to remain...

Sundar

Not at all a bad idea! Defintely one worth giving a shot. Now all I need to do is track her e-mail down. Of course with all the recent flak she got she may just pass out at the title of our blog.
:-)

Sukanya
Bravo!

Imagine the headlines. Khushboo hospitalzed after recieving strange e-mail request. !!! :-)

Anusheh, I believe it does, and it is beginning to happen... not just in our activist armchair dialogues and travelogues, but deep in the country's heartland. recall the the incident of these odd rag tag bunch of basti women in Maharashtra, if I recall, Nashik was it who lynched a molester and then all of them stood in court and said arrest us all... i remember all the hundreds of ordinary women and men who joined us in a weeklong silent vigil when Anjana Mishra was gangraped by the attorney general and his cohorts in Orissa, when Graham Staines and his 2 sons were buried alive.. if nothing else, it warms the cockles of my heart that somewhere we did stand up, even if it didnt really change things, but to me and my ilk it has always been important to speak up; the magnitude of the impact isn't that important.

baby steps, yet meaningful: at our own levels insisting on certain ethics and rules in our immediate environment. As MC and host at a high profile event in July last year, where HE the President was chief guest and a host of other luminaries wre present and participating: since I was the emcee, I repeatedly announced from the dias that the dignitaries had to switch off their mobile phones, each one of them, till a point when people didnt listen, I announced that I take the prerogative of being emcee and secretary general of the national initiative, and politely promised that I would throw out each one of them if I found their mobiles ringing during the two hour session..

Or when NASSCOM and my team threw me a surprise birthday party during our annual staff retreat in Mahabalipuram last year.. there was a band and a DJ... poor fellow, he made the mistake of playing hindi remixes at my birthday party... I asked him to leave and announced to my team that i was DJ for the evening and they would be entertained only with what I chose to play.. Sent the DJ packing and played all the music that I loved... from Elvis and Miles Davis to Santana, and Buddha Bar to Madan Mohan and SD Burman, and underground trance... people came back later to say how different it was..

My drivers at UNICEF and at NASSCOM learnt that they not only had to mind their p's and q's but ensure no body odour, but also to park correctly, follow one way rules and in general avoid making trouble...

I remember the first anti war demonstration against the Iraq invasion... while 3 million gathered in London to protest, we were a ragtag band of 60 odd people who marched in Puri to mark the day..

Or insisting that immediate family cannot employ any one under the age of 18.. or insisting on buying a platform ticket everytime one was at any railway station... on not buying pirated books music or films or publication thatc ompromised human dignity... for that matter requesting for paper bags everywhere I go and give back the plastic bags if they didnt cater to or contribted to te idea of a fair integral environment.
No firecrackers from Sivkasi and absolutely no carpets from Bhadohi or glass bangles from ghaziabad et al

Thanks Maya,Jasjit Anushen..

these everyday rebelions are my way of standing up and being counted

Like the signage on President Truman's desk - The buck stops here.

OOPS... sorry for all the typos.. I was writing away without minding my spellings and there they are - so many of them. Apologies.

:)any publicity is good publicity, jasjit!!!maybe worth a definite try...

eventful life , sukanya! indeed, the buck stops here in more ways than one can imagine...

Well Sukanya what you talk about are individual initiatives. Which is all really it can ever be. Individuals choose to stand up or not and the notion of a civil society is really nothing more than that. Whereas I have many stories under my belt of remarkable women, children and men who stood up to make a difference it doesnt change the fact that when it comes to the sexual degradation of women civil society hardly ever comes of age. A good case in point is the way America is never able to legislate against hard core pornography or still manage an equal rights amendment.

Sukanya - I like your spirit!

But what's the issue with carpets from Bardohi or glass bangles from Ghaziabad?

Just wondering!

Glad to see there are progressive-minded, open-hearted and intelligent people in India who are not trodding with the rest of the herded sheep!

I like this site!

Thanks for appreciating the site Gori.

And like a stupid, i've been buying platform tickets all this while!!!