Open Letter to the Editor ‘Bombay Times’

I read the article “Amitji is sexy but I prefer Abhishek” in today’s (29 May’07) paper. This article features on the front page of the ‘Bombay Times’ supplement. It is about a child artist ‘Swini Khara’ who acted in the latest, much talked about, Amitabh starrer movie “Cheeni Kum”. The article is basically an interview with this child artist about her success and her take on being labeled “sexy” in this movie.

The byline of the article says this: I quote “Swini Khera lives with her ‘Sexy’ tag thanks to her role as Amitabh Bachchan’s cute girl friend in Cheeni Kum.”

I object to the word ‘Sexy’ being used for a child artist. It is bad enough that we have got into this trend of labeling each and every woman or female artist who appears on the silver screen as ‘Sexy’ irrespective of whether she really deserves the title or not! But, using this tag for a child, barely 9 or 10 years old takes the cake! Aren’t we all hypocrites? Here we are (that is- the moral police) objecting to all kinds of things happening in our country, from PDA to women being forced to wearing proper clothes in college, to avoid being an object of “Sexual desire” for guys, etc…! And in contrast, the media seems to think it is perfectly alright to label a mere kid as ‘sexy’! Are we encouraging "pedophiles" here in projecting kids as "objects of Sexual desire", more so after the infamous scandulous case of "Nithari" killings coming to light!It's shocking!

Here, I would like to ask this reporter, Ms Priyanka Dasgupta, as to how she would react if someone called her child daughter ‘sexy’? We, as parents, try to teach our children good language and I would have objected if my kid started using such language, who is of the same age! I would like to ask her if she thinks that this Swini really understands what this word means? To top it all, in the interview, she also asks Swini if she considers Amitji to be “Sexy” or not? I very strongly object to this line of questioning for child artists! We should let kids be kids and should try to refrain from using such words in their presence! It’s bad enough that they get to hear these things on TV etc… But, we can avoid using it ON kids in particular!

It is my sincere request, Kindly leave kids out of it! And such articles should not feature in your paper, leave alone the front page!

I just hope, for the sake of decency, that someone takes notice of this!