Fashion is bad for you

Because I and most likely most boys of my age in their formative years were denied a healthy, unhypocritic sex education, our resort at better understanding of the fairer sex was taken up by Michel Adam and his team at Ftv. Hmmm...thats just an excuse for my voyeuristic tendencies. Though I had a late awakening (cable took a while in entering my household) many nights were spent in the drawing room on the pretext of burning the midnight oil for approaching exams. Under the fat BS Raman text books were neatly camouflaged Grishams and Higgins, which would eventually be put away sharp at 00:00 hours for some visual feasting sponsored by Midnight Hot. I wouldn't say it was my first sight of minimalism, but it did develop a short lived lively interest in haute couture. My philosophy in fashion sustains though, since those early easily influenced days- summers are for minimalism and all seasons for all things pretty and beautiful.

Now, Ambika Soni and the team at the I&B Ministry decide that a whole generation of teenagers raging hormones and all will have to be bereft of the coming of age ritual of tuning into Ftv for their daily fix of titillation for the next 10 days! Obviously there is the internet which has various sources to bypass the I&B order. But it just doesn't match up to watching it on TV in mute, ears perked to approaching feet, index finger twitching on the next channel button on the remote, in anticipation of someone entering the room.

Apart from nipping bright Bals/Valayas/et al in the bud it is also a strong indictment that watching fashionable things trotting down a ramp is a crime! In that case wouldn't it be even grievous a crime to broadcast shows like MTV Roadies, Big Boss and such? Oh, that's reality focused programing delving into human emotions under duress, a social experiment. Excellent! Repeated news flashes of Nityananda's friskiness did not cause a shut down of news channels? That would be termed social awareness I guess.

So why cant we choose what we want to watch? Because the I& B guys think "The visuals were found to be obscene, denigrating women and were not suitable for children and unrestricted public exhibition." There is absolutely no denigration of the woman or child as is the case in pornography, in fact it is more like a method of advertising your ware to potential clientele. And its perfect viewing for children in their talkative teenage prime. Have you noticed how they turn quiet when a modestly dressed woman appears on TV? Hell, most adults also do!

This suppressed hypocritical moral policing will continue in the name of saving the child from culture which is clearly anti Indian, more so anti Bharatiya Nari- until maybe the I&B guys do a workshop with Mr. Howard Stern or more locally maybe Nityananda himself.