#VogueEmpower: This viral video in India makes a powerful statement on women's choice

By Hyacinth Mascarenhas

“My body, my mind, my choice.”

As part of Vogue India’s social awareness campaign, #VogueEmpower, Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone and director Homi Adajania have collaborated to create a beautiful short film with a powerful message about women’s empowerment that is sure to give you goose bumps.

Titled ‘My Choice,’ the two and a half minute, black-and-white video features Padukone and 98 other women from Mumbai from different walks of life, all of whom have made marks in their own respective careers.

“I liked the idea of telling people I originally had 100 women planned but God said the last one was too busy right now,” said Adajania.

The video was based on a piece written by Kersi Khambatta and shot by Tassaduq Hussain.

Padukone, who does the voice over for the film, spoke out about her own battle with anxiety and depression earlier this year – an unprecedented revelation for an Indian actress in a country where discussing mental illness is often met with shame and stigma.

In this film, she calls for a change in the caged patriarchal mindset that exists not only in India, but around the world, and asks people to stop passing judgment on women based on their clothes, profession and personal life.

“It is my choice to live the way I want, to wear clothes I like, to decide how I want my body to be, when I want to get married or if I ever want to walk down the aisle,” Padukone said in the video.

Echoing the thoughts of millions of women around the world, this beautiful film challenges regressive sexist ideologies and showcases the need for equality, individuality and the right of every woman to make her own decisions, whether social, political, economical or even sexual, in every aspect of her life.

“In my family, my father is the only male in the house, but all of us have a voice,” said Padukone. “I’ve always been allowed to be who I want to be. When you’re not caged, when you don’t succumb to expectation, that’s when you’re empowered.”

According to Vogue India, the #VogueEmpower initiative was launched with the seventh anniversary issue “to encourage people to think, talk and act in small on issues pertaining to women’s empowerment.”

Last year, the initiative also launched the powerful ‘Start With The Boys’ video on domestic violence and ‘Going Home,’ a short film that urges the audience to image a place where “mistrust and fear do not dictate actions and decisions.”

In a world where one in four girls are forced to get married before the age of 18 and one in four adolescent women experience sexual violence, the power of a simple video is a step in the right direction, not through the likes it may garner, but through the crucial message that spreads, educates and empowers.

As Vogue India best put it: It starts with you.