Quoted from The Kathmandu Post

By Nitika Nepal

Are women marketing their bodies cheaply today? Are they carrying wolf at the slightest hint of ‘violence against women?’ Are they literally inviting sexual assaults and harassment by their behaviors and manner of dressing and then complaining against hapless man?Take the recent reports of college girls in Nepal’s metro cities taking to prostitution to earn easy money to finance their hedonistic life style. It is said that notwithstanding the sizeable pocket money they get from their indulgent parents, they become ‘available women’ listed by ‘agents’ who contact them on their cell phones whenever a client wants sex for money. The girls secretly reach the hotel rooms or venues named by the clients and offer all kinds of sexual pleasure to them. But whenever they get involved in violence or scandal, they report that they have been sexually harassed by men or worse still, that they are victims of male violence and rape. The result of this publicity is that all women waiting for buses and tempos are mistaken to be ‘listed women’ and approached by men for sex!

To some extent, women themselves are responsible for the proliferation of sexual harassment and violence against them. They invite trouble by misusing the freedom which laws give them and use nudity and sexuality to earn big money. Whenever there is trouble or criticism, they raise the bogey for empowerment and succeed in creating a public hue and cry when actually they are prepared to go to any lengths to finance their licentious life styles. One expression for this growing obscenity is what we see in music videos.

As if to support this statement, many shocked viewers say, “the ratio of boobs and butts in music videos and films is mind-numbing. The boob -butt shows are obscene. Yet the stars or models justify them by vociferous statements about their right to do what they want. Young women in Nepal, emulating them, carry this concept of ‘freedom’ into their daily lives and often come to grief. Not surprisingly, many women’s organizations, parents and social activists have complained to the Censor Board and the government and asked for control on television programs and films which present near-nude women who invite sexual advances. Is their concern justified?

Channel heads and media persons disagree. It is the parents’ duty to supervise their children what they should watch and what they should not, they say. However, a closer examination of this scenario in recent years tells a different story.

With this living on the edge’ life style, with adventure and sexual

Bravado, women have given a wrong meaning to empowerment. Anyone who points out the dangers of such a situation is condemned as the ‘moral police’ by media, which has a vested interest in continuing with this nude charade and empowerment bubble. But the bitter fact today is that women are making a laughing stock of themselves by turning the sacred principle of empowerment into a joke.