Much has been said and written about the Deepika Padukone-TOI controversy. Many stars such as Karan Johar, Alia Bhatt, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Kapoor have openly come out and supported the actress.

But there has been a cringe worthy, other side too. A side that wonders why Deepika Padukone is making a big deal out of the whole thing? “It is she who wears clothes like that after all,” they say. And quite frankly, an opinion like that, is disturbing to the very core.

Pooja Bedi was one of the women who criticised Deepika for her behaviour.

“When you are a public figure and you go out to a press event, you are bound to be dissected from your chipped nail polish to your repeated shoes. If admiring and focussing on a woman’s assets is a crime, all item numbers should be banned. How fair is it to say, I will dress to tantalise publicly, but you have to look the other way? In your homes, you dress keeping in mind the reactions you will receive from your family, in-laws, husband and neighbours,” was what she said.

Now let’s just take a moment to re read one of her sentences.

“How fair is it to say, I will dress to tantalise publicly, but you have to look the other way?”

This is precisely the problem every woman in this country faces today. People think that a sexy dress is a free pass to ogle and stare till the point of awkwardness and uncomfortably. Because hey, your clothes are to blame.

Does this situation ring a bell? It probably does. Because the funda here is essentially the same as the clothes cause rapes point.

“You are dressing scantily and expecting people not to rape?”

“You are expecting scantily and expecting people not to put up cheap articles about you?”

Agreed there is a difference in the two outcomes, however, both actions are still derogatory to women with the blame falling on them.

The recent response by TOI has only made it worse. Instead of issuing an apology, they have gone ahead and posted pictures of Deepika Padukone’s sexy photo shoots.

However, the response clearly backfired for TOI as support for Deepika grew stronger as it was quite evident on social media sites.