There is a new movie in town called Kaho na Kaho. Of course you may never hear of it leave alone go for it, but what you must know about is the wonderful tagline they have come up with for their poster. It reads, hold your breath darlings, "Ambitious woman always loses her virginity." (You don't believe me, please check out the poster at the Dadar station.) What I would really like to do is find out if the actresses of the movie consider themselves ambitious or not :-P And the million dollar question who was at the helm of the marketing and copywriting for this film?
A friend of mine on seeing it commented so does that mean unambitious women don't lose their virginity? Most of us do at some point of time or the other isn't it? So I fail to understand what is the connection between ambition and virginity? Let me refresh their knowledge of history a bit. Long ago there was an ambitious Tudor princess in England called Elizabeth and you know what she went on to be called the 'Virgin Queen' of England. Any Brit worth his salt would say that she was very very ambitious. Whether she lost her virginity later on is still a matter of debate.
Case in point 2. Can you then explain to me the fact that in the US there are a lot of teenagers who lose their virginity and also drop out of school/college? Some of them end up as housewives too. So unambitious (the conventional definition, not mine) isn't it? And yet they have lost their virginity. So will they now be called ambitious? Actually why go to the US, there are many women in our country who are married off early and remain housewives and marriage does mean a loss of virginity (unless your husband is gay), so are they ambitious or unambitious? I am really confused here.
As I was researching on this topic I found out that some great literary geniuses like Jane Austen, Shaw, Lewis Carrol and W.B.Yeats were celibate. They were all ambitious. Oh heck there are two men here, how could I forget. Men are supposed to be ambitious, natural instinct and all that so it doesn't matter if they are virgins does it? In fact there are people in the West wondering if celibacy means more productivity? (For the simple reason that celibacy means no severely close relationships, no surrender of control of your life to another human being and therefore you could do what you want and not because virginity is sanctity).
But is virginity about ambition or is it about preparedness for a sexual life? Why the drama over virginity? If you look at history closely one of the most obvious reasons to ensure virginity of a bride was so that the successor born to that particular woman is surely that of her husband, a ploy to ensure that property goes to a genuine member of the bloodline. (However the devil in me wonders what if a woman loses her virginity to one man and bears the child of another, who was to tell in the era of no DNA tests?) And why is only a woman's ambition or virginity an issue? If a woman has to necessarily be a virgin, who is to guarantee that the man she marries is a virgin? A man can be ambitious or not ambitious, but it never affects any of his choices in life. But an ambitious woman is always a BITCH (Babe In Total Control Of Herself btw).
So is this tagline talking about the casting couch? If so, is it only the ambition of the victim to be blamed for the existence of such an institution? So what will they say about ambitious men who sleep with men for jobs? (Yes it happens you know). But well, we have a tendency to always blame the victim. If a girl gets raped, she has invited it and if a guy/young boy is raped by another man or woman, he didn't have the guts to fight back. It is always the victim's problem. And hey what ambition do rape victims have I would like to know because even they lose their virginity.
There will be many who will denounce me as trying to corrupt the value system of the society. All I want to tell them is that I am not advocating mindless sex, all I am saying is that virginity is not the measure of character or lack of it. Nor is ambition the measure of when you will lose it. Ambition at best is just the measure of where you see yourself in the future not even how the world sees you, because everyone has their own definition of ambition isn't it?
P.S sorry for any loss of coherence in the post, the ridiculousness of the whole thing just made me a bit angry.
i agree with you why when you say, that why does virginity has to decide weather a girl is ambitious or not. but maybe that movie tag line is conveying something else. maybe the topic they want to show is something else something more specific about a women who is forced to sleep to achieve her goal.
ReplyDeleteevery movie has a theme and so does this movie. well and about other things thats you said i guess its just a matter of time when people will realise that loosing virginity does not mean the girl is off track or not good and stuffs
PS nice post.. makes people think on this topic. which is really important
whoa!!! highly volatile topic
ReplyDeleteglad yu brought it up!
we are in a modern world and i guess, virginity is no big deal anymore...
ReplyDeletebut i grew up in a conservative family so i value virginity...
with the permissive society we have now in this times, well, that's it!
its not about valuing virginity actually...I perfectly support your stand coz I believe that too...what I am against is being intolerant towards people who make a different choice
ReplyDelete"Ambitious woman always loses her virginity."
ReplyDeleteMust be the stupidest tag line ever... just some exaggerated male chauvinism...
but as pooja says,it could also mean that the movie is about a gal who is forced to sleep to move up in life... no knowing whether its a movie with a theme or just another B grade movie, until one sees it...