Bollywood actress Rhea Chakraborty has been making headlines for several reasons, her typographical t-shirt talking about smashing patriarchy being one.
Several actors and media persons have been dubbing Rhea’s trial by media and the Narcotics Control Bureau in connection with Sushant Singh Rajput’s death as a 'witch hunt'. And just as the country was debating right and wrong and questing the moral codes set by society, the young actress arrived for one of her grilling sessions in a t-shirt that read: “Roses are red, Violets are blue, Let’s smash patriarchy, Me and you.”
If the pertinent slogan on the t-shirt is not reason enough to make it stand out, the thought behind launching the collection surely does. The t-shirt is part of the 'Roses Are Red' campaign run by online clothing and accessories company -- The Souled Store in collaboration with an NGO called GiveHer5.
In the product description space on The Souled Store page, they define the campaign as an awareness drive on the importance of all women having access to sanitary napkins.
It reads: “Over 500 million women in India can't afford sanitary napkins, causing them to miss up to five days of school/ work every month? GiveHer5 has developed the world's first reusable sanitary napkin - to give each girl/ woman those five days back! We have launched the ‘Roses Are Red’ campaign in association with GiveHer5 to raise awareness on this issue and help raise funds. One t-shirt sold = One girl’s yearly requirement of sanitary napkins.”
After the t-shirt went viral again, the company decided to relaunch it. A report, quoted The Souled Store as saying: “Based on multiple requests from customers, we have decided to relaunch this t-shirt for the very reason we began -- to start a conversation about women empowerment
The fact that Chakraborty a T-Shirt chose about the 'patriarchy' following the viral images of her looking helpless and harrassed amid a sea of poking microphones held by male journalists was a not a "bold" move as some might call it. It was a message that the sexism cannot be justified, no matter who a woman and what she has (or hasn't) done.