Laaga Chunnari Mein Daag -- Everybody Gets Exploited!

So I saw Laaga Chunari Mein Daag this afternoon, since I was too tired from my train adventure to do much else.

We all know that it's the film where Rani Mukherjee becomes a prostitute.

(Mild spoiler alert.)

But what pissed me off was the way they handled the parallel character, Rani's sister "Chutki," played by Konkona Sen Sharma.

Chutki is "the smart sibling." While Rani's character bumbles around Bombay trying to get a job with no applicable skills (thus making prostitution her inevitable conclusion), we see Chutki slaving away at her books and eventually getting a scholarship to a Bombay MBA program.

Suddenly she's working for an advertisement company, and we see her given the assignment to create an ad proposal for Lux soap.

Montage of Chutki working night and day. On the morning of her scheduled presentation, she's slumped in front of her computer. Enter hottie colleague. He asks what's wrong, and she says that it's almost time for the presentation and she's got nothing to show that's any good. Hottie says "go freshen up, I'll take care of it."

When Chutki arrives at the presentation (which Hottie delivers instead of her) she finds out that Hottie has been secretly taking pictures of her for the past week or so and is using them to propose to the agency that she, Chutki, become the new face of Lux soap.

And thus Chutki becomes a fashion model. Well, technically a soap advertisement model, but we can tell that her career is just beginning.

And, of course, she marries Hottie.

Now -- forgive me for being irrational -- but isn't Chutki selling her body as much as her older sister is? Sure, she's not selling sex literally, but she's selling her sexual power.

What this movie said to me was "Look. The only currency women have are their bodies. Even if you get a MBA and a good job, you're still at the mercy of men who want to exploit your body for money."

Oh, Yash Raj. You deserve your collaboration with Disney.