Positive Body Image

"For the first time ever, a Victoria’s Secret model walked the runway with natural hair. Rather than bending to VS’s traditional beauty standards, 23-year-old Angolan model Maria Borges rocked the runway sans wig, weave or even extensions. For Borges, it was a history-making in a personal way."

Yellow Journalism

In a Whatsapp group, one of my batch mates reported how some newspapers printed photos from a raid on three restaraunts by the police in Agartala. One of the couples were legitimate, engaged and to be married soon. Some were obviously not working girls, but seeking to have private time with their lovers.  Is that so bad? Where in an otherwise repressed society would you be able to do that? Do you seek blessings from your parents to gain carnal knowledge of your partner? That would be wonderful, to be able to communicate and learn about safe sex from your family. But we’d rather you had half-baked ideas and set to explore on your own, and ended up in the lock-up for the night.

Though we all agreed about the need to shut down shady businesses in our hometown, we debated the necessity to publish those pictures for public consumption.  Scandal-mongering is an old tactic used by media houses when there is no substantial news to report. But there is another reason too- sensationalism sells. Period.

For instance, The Statesman (headquartered in Kolkata) was considered a good, clean English daily newspaper while we were growing up in Agartala. The Telegraph, on the other hand, had supplements every Thursday called Telekids which had cartoons and articles for kids, a Friday spread of movie celebrities, and a Sunday magazine, Graphiti, with articles on food, art, and lifestyle. Since the later was more entertaining to my elder brother and me for different reasons, we tried to convince our parents to start subscribing to The Telegraph instead of The Statesman. Though the editorial section of The Statesman was one of the best in the country, we pleaded to stop our substantial diet and feed on junk. I don’t remember reading one single news article in The Telegraph after the subscription changed. All I read was Telekids and Graphiti.

I am not saying that one is better than the other, but every time we pick up entertainment instead of news, we are breaking the pen of another honest reporter. The scare headlines with no substantial news live on.