Case against Malayalam magazine 'Grihalakshmi' for featuring model breastfeeding child on cover

A criminal case under the Indecent Representation of Women Act has been filed on Friday on the controversial cover page of the Malayalam women's magazine Grihalakshmi which shows a woman gazing at the reader with a gentle smile on her lips and an infant at her breast.

Malayalam fortnightly magazine Grihalakshmi has challenged patriarchy among several social norms by featuring model, poet, writer and air hostess Gilu Joseph breastfeeding a baby on the cover.

The cover page of the Malayalam magazine shows a woman breastfeeding a baby, with the caption "Mothers tell Kerala: Don't stare, we want to breastfeed".

The complaint was filed by the lawyers in Kerala which claimed about the indecent depiction of women on the cover page.

The criminal complaint has been filed in the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kollam, by Advocate Vinod Mathew Wilson. It is alleged in the complaint that the picture is lascivious in nature, appealing to prurient interests and tends to degrade the dignity of womanhood.

The topic the magazine intended to push was the troubles of breastfeeding in public places. But sadly, this was little more than a marketing gimmick, on how they did not use a real mother but opted for a good-looking model.

Grihalakshmi has for years been known to do little more than put out recipes, fashion and beauty tips, interviews with film stars and serialised soppy romances. A magazine that propagated very conventional and traditional views of womanhood.

The magazine's campaign 'Breastfeed freely' is a part of its International Women's Day celebrations and was inspired by a 23-year-old mother Amritha U, whose photo of feeding her child went viral on the Internet in January this year, after her husband A B Biju shared it on Facebook.

OneIndia News