PUNE: As Indian women hope for their big break in the fashion, film and glamor world as Pond's Femina Miss India opened in Pune on Sunday, there are rising concerns among activists present nearby that the concept of women and sex and beauty is being lost among the elite in India. “We have battled so hard to not be treated like second-class citizens,” one of the activists told Bikyamasr.com while holding a sign that read “women are not objects.” She was in Pune to battle against the campaigns to promote whiteness, but a second issue in the past month has arisen in India over a new vaginal tightening cream that promotes itself as allowing women to “feel like a virgin” again. For this activist, who said she was a relative of a top Bollywood star, the concept of women and sex in India “is out of control. “We are just bodies to look at, to assault, abuse and rape, and the media and these companies just keep pushing the notion to men,” she added. According to the 18 Again cream ad, a woman sings and dances while she smiles into the camera, in an obvious seductive position that alludes to the fact she is not a virgin. “I feel like a virgin,” she then says. Her shocked in-laws look on, before her husband joins her for some salsa-style dancing. “Feels like the very first time,” she continues, as she is twirled around. The cream has sparked massive outcries over the role of women in the public sphere. After last summer's controversy surrounding Sherlyn Chopra's nude photo shoot with American adult magazine Playboy, the concept of women's empowerment has once again sparked concerns across the country that India is heading in the wrong direction in terms of women's rights. Women in the country have linked the concept of virginity promoted with the 18 Again cream with the nude photo shoot by Chopra. They feel that women are being pushed to be more sexual, privately and publicly, than ever before. With Indian women's rights activists lamenting the sexualization of women in the country, they fear the backlash from Chopra's nude shoot with the American adult magazine. Although they grant Chopra the right to do what she wants with her body, show it off to whomever, including the world, they argue it could be a negative for the country, hit by a massive number of sexual violence toward women in recent months. Chopra released the photos in a series of tweets on her personal Twitter account last month. They were nude photos and almost immediately went viral across India, with men and women wanting a glimpse of their first cover girl. The nude shoot has sparked anger among women's rights advocates in the country, saying that India has already “sexualized" women and the nude shoot will only “heighten the stereotypes." Sunita Gudnanti, a social worker who works with battered women in Delhi, told Bikyamasr.com that she is disappointed in Chopra's decision to do the photo shoot. “I have heard so many stories of women being beaten up by their spouses or boyfriends because they refused to do something the man read or saw online, so the idea that an Indian woman will go nude for the magazine is likely to sexualize the issue of women's rights and heighten the stereotypes that women are objects," she said. When published, Chopra will be the first Indian to grace the cover of the magazine. She said the shoot will be “explicit," which Gudnanti argues will be a negative for Indian society. “We deal with sexual violence towards women on a daily basis here and one of the reasons for this explosion, we believe, is that the media has sexualized and made women objects," she argued. “Look at Times of India's website and others, it is full of articles about women and sex, their bodies and images of naked or little clothed women. It is very sad," she added.
