January 22, 2025

The ongoing war of words between Deepika Padukone and the media over the online publication of her revealing pictures with pointers at her cleavage shows no sign of dying down. Deepika had taken offence on the way the pictures were published – she says she is woman, has breasts and therefore has cleavage. We all know that Ms Padukone. Every woman has breasts – the sizes differ. The prominence of the cleavage also differs accordingly. The urge to display them in public also differs.

Now we come to the main point. Was Times of India Entertainment guilty of invading Deepikaâ€â"¢s privacy or of showing disrespect to her? Obviously not. Deepika is in the glamour profession. It is her bread and butter to look hot and glamorous for the cameras, be it the moving one or the DSLR. She has to portray an image of being desirable in all her public appearances. The day she stops looking hot, the day the camera stops loving her – that would be the day her price would start falling down.

Now we come to the secondary point. If Deepika has to look hot and desirable in order to earn her living, she needs the world to know about it. That is why she continues to live the reel life in the real life, making appearances at parties and events in cleavage revealing dresses. While we are all for there being no dress code for women, but the fact that these actors pout and pose at the red carpet, even considering requests from photographers to give the best angle, means that they want to show the world how hot they look. Hence, they cannot turn around and say that you cannot publish this or that photo. They cannot act as censors of their own public appearance pictures.

Their job ends with getting the photo clicked. It is the editorâ€â"¢s job to decide which photo will be published and how prominently. If Deepika has an issue with publication of her pictures, she should tell the media about it. They will stop clicking her totally. But that will work against her career. So she wants to have the free publicity but on her terms. That, Ms Padukone, is not done. She has said that the photographer did not take her permission before clicking the picture. Since when do photographers need permission to click pictures of celebrities at public events?

If the photographer had invaded her privacy – like it was done when pictures of bikini clad Katrina with Ranbir Kapoor on a private holiday were splashed in the media – by clicking her at a private party or expressly against her wishes, or if the picture was photoshopped, she had every right to protest. But since the picture was clicked in one of her public appearances by a photographer just doing his job, there should be no objection to it. It seems Deepika is unnecessarily making a mountain out of a valley.