Are we really true about #selfiewithdaughter?

With all regards to the latest digital campaign #selfiewithdaughter and people’s sentiments, I am here to say I am aren’t quite impressed.  Rather I am restless with questions in my mind and I have been looking forward to put them across. Refraining from beating around the bush, I will not shy away from saying that the whole idea of posing and digital sharing looks more like a brand promotion to me. To put it simply, nowhere it connects to the seriousness of the issue.  I have my reasons to believe so!

Lets see how it started. Our honorable Prime Minister Mr. Modi spoke on Mann ki Baat, proposed the idea of sharing selfies with the hashtag ‘Selfiewithdaughter’ and the idea went viral with people going berserk with their selfies. Well, I seriously don’t have a problem with that rather I was happy to see my Twitter and Facebook timeline flood with cute selfies of beautiful daughters with their handsome fathers.  Whats bothering me is why this show-off and sudden outpour of love towards our daughters? Are girls so weak that now a selfie is being used as a stand to save them ? Why is everyone suddenly so keen to post selfies with daughters when all this while the male dominated society has been associating their dreams with their sons? 

I am bothered more and thus I ask if we really love our daughters so much then why do we hardly care about the injustice done to them, just because they are someone else’s daughter.

Does posing for a selfie guarantee that people are really very happy and proud about having a daughter? How does the selfie inspire someone who has been mistreating his daughter?

I am also perturbed because for always we have had this in our minds and now we are doing the bias among our own kids.  Why this inclination towards daughters when sons and daughters both are meant to be equal?

Those who love their daughters and are proud of them need no selfies to prove and those who don’t will not change for a picture. The mindset has to evolve and change for the good. People must set example by their actions and not selfies. This ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ momentum needs  a different kind of seriousness- more of thoughts and actions than of pictures. Lets list it down!

• I am left wondering how will taking a selfie save a girl child when we are so heavily obsessed with our sons, our legacy, our blood hierarchy. No wonder, majority of the population in our country believes that females are inferior to men. Whatever be her achievements, she has to do household chores, get married, go to another house and bear children. I would want the selfie to help them overcome this school of thought.

• They say ‘selfie is the new craze’  Really? I feel shameful to mention but the truth is disrespecting and harassing a girl is more of a craze than anything else. You have a daughter at home but you do not shy from eyeing someone else’s daughter. How about being a father-figure then?

• Does your daughter see her best friend in you? Whats the point of posing for a picture when a few years down the line you will be harping biased societal rules on her? All the more worse if she old enough and you hardly know whats troubling her, what does she want in life and why she wants to do something different?  Stand for the selfie but before that stand by your daughter through thick and thin because that would be the best shot.

• I have seen the difference in celebration in hospitals. The moment a son is born there is a different tone of conversations and when a girl is born its all together a different scenario. The mother is made to feel guilty and everyone around looks sullen. Some do celebrate the birth of the daughter maintaining a low key affair with a hope that there will be a son coming soon. Why is this fondness for son when the daughter is capable of doing everything? Remember to send your #selfiewithdaughter immediately to everyone in the family.

• Only when you nurse respectful thoughts for the whole clan of women around you, I call you a true father. Because I know we have all grown up in our society that teaches us to treat the fairer sex with lesser dignity and the pampered men feel they can boss around. Its high time we change the rules. Somewhere we all know that the bias exists. Had it not been that, #selfiewithdaughter  would never be happening. A selfie with your daughter is only worth it if you actually treat a woman like a woman, no more- no less!

I would applaud all those who have been posting selfies with their girl child on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other social media platform. I would really want to see them as great fathers of the century. I have one at home and I know how it feels to be a daughter to a man who is more of actions than reactions.

I am the only daughter to my parents and my father has been  . He made me study in the best of schools and encouraged me to do everything that the boys did. I was never told I am the son of the family nor I was told I must learn cooking, that’s a girl’s job. I was always a kid to my parents who was guided to follow her heart and make her own decisions.

 I must mention my father is yet to post a selfie with me! Do we need one? Not really!