Of budgets and naked woman

The budget is out and I dont know where to look! No, the budget is not an embarassment. It has ceased to be one for sure. But how many finance ministers can claim that their decisions have resulted directly in The Times of India resembling the centrefold of Playboy and also fulfilling the fantasies of the stronger sex by reading about numbers, percentages, taxes, rebates and pie charts. But I digress.

I read about the budget in the papers but I was severely distracted not by inflationary numbers but inflationary figures of the weaker and fairer sex. The Times of India outdid it’s obsession with taking puns literally and therefore fulfilled all teenage/ pre-teenage boyish fantasies and also by hammering the gender stereotype down impressionable minds. Thank you TOI. You are doing us a great service here.

So when my eyes roam the newspaper trying to glean some relevant information, I spot what I was looking for. Thanks to TOI again, I find that Aussie lap-dancers, prostitutes and strippers can claim deduction on accessories and tools that aid them in their profession aka whips, handcuffs, lubricants, oils, gels etc. I can pass this info onto my non-imbibing, vegetarian marwadi chartered accountant. He might be able to save me some crisps. This saucy news was accompanied with an illustration of woman on her stomach with her bare bums cleaved with a thong and lips holding a black whip. Webcam strippers will also be taxed but for now let’s enjoy the pic that accompanied it- a similarly bare woman with blood red stilettoes. No wonder then India’s ‘largest circulating newspaper’ engenders misogyny and encourages objectification of women based even on a drab and dull subject like India’s annual budget. One picture is called virginity VAT. What? Vat of virginity? Virginity in VAT? VATican Virginity? What is it?? I mean what are we supposed to infer here? That TOI thinks it comes up with some amazing puns? Now the pictures ain’t even clever darling, they are well….just pictures.

This newspaper can take something a subject as innocuous as increased broadband speed or a housewife’s worth simply transform an activity that is as far from sexuality as an amoeba to something that you would instantly associate with post coital imagery or at least something that leads to it. It indulges every man’s (and by man I mean man as opposed to person) fantasy and imagination by showing women in various states of undress indulging in a range of activities that includes washing cars, holding a steaming iron, lounging on bed with a laptop or simply eating salads.

All these photographs deal with small (thank god) pointless articles that deal with a housewife’s worth, increased broadband speeds and healthy eating habits.
I want to know if TOI has a very deliberate policy of sexualizing any and every theme/ subject by using pictures that barely represent the words that are printed. When I read that my efforts as a housewife are worth 37,000$ annually, it made me feel good about myself. I mean these are tax-free dollars after all. But one look at the picture and my self- worth evaporated. A woman was shown wearing lingerie with an iron in one hand and wisps of clothing in the other and she was looking at then with a strange expression that I could not decipher.

How come for an article on management colleges, TOI doesn’t use pictures of buff beach bums or handsome hunks wearing swimming trunks that are worn way below the belt or simply put male species in various states of undress that are provocative and extremely vulgar. Take a hunk, put him on a beach and thrust a netbook or a laptop in his hand. If it’s about the budget just show a naked man in bed wearing a thong, with a cigarette in his hand and bills and more bills covering every inch of his glorious, gym-toned muscles.

If picture speaks a thousand words, then I am dumb indeed. .