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Actresses Across Kerala Are Saying #YesWeHaveLegs to End Moral Policing

. 3 min read . Written by Vanshika Goenka
Actresses Across Kerala Are Saying #YesWeHaveLegs to End Moral Policing

Remember the #ChallengeAccepted trend that took the internet by storm a while ago? Well, women across Kerala are making their own dent in the world of social media to put an end to moral policing and cyberbullying. 

With the hashtag #YesWeHaveLegs, actors from the Malayalam film fraternity are coming in support of 18-year-old actor Anaswara Rajan who was harassed by internet trolls for wearing shorts in an image posted on Instagram. 

The #YesWeHaveLegs trend was taken up by Malayalam actors to put an end to online harassment

The hashtag was started by Malayalam film actor Rima Kallingal and was followed by many others posting images of themselves showing their legs. The hashtag garnered support from actors such as Parvathy, Nazriya Nazim, Ahaana Krishna, Kani Kusruti and Poornima Indrajith.

Anaswara Rajan herself responded to the trolls with another Instagram image with the caption, “Don’t worry about what I’m doing. Worry about why you’re worried about what I’m doing.”

View this post on Instagram

@anaswara.rajan 🔥

A post shared by Nazriya Nazim Fahadh (@nazriyafahadh) on

The image elicited over 3 lakh likes. The hashtag has garnered over 600 posts, with a number of Malayali women hopping on the bandwagon and giving their own two cents about women’s freedom to wear what they want without being policed.

The patriarchy divides women into the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ basis the clothes they wear. In a recent Times Now news segment, an image of a bikini-clad actor Rakul Preet Singh was showcased with the words ‘used drugs’ stamped across her name. The segment talked about the actor’s alleged involvement in the drug allegations against Rhea Chakraborty – it is interesting to note that the image used was that of Rakul Preet Singh wearing a skimpy outfit, done with the intention of portraying her in a negative light. The women in question did not have control over which image would be used to represent them, which speaks volumes about the control – or lack thereof – women have over their own bodies.

Social media, on the other hand, is a space where many women express themselves the way they want to, to the audience they want to. They can control whom they follow and who follows them, and that makes social media a freeing space where they can be themselves without judgement. But being a public figure can still bring with it a host of trolls and can prove detrimental to one’s mental health, while also inhibiting their freedom to carve their own space online. 

In a space where a woman is choosing to portray her sexuality without the fear of being judged, there should be no tolerance for trolls and moral police. Women deserve to have their own place in the digital world without the threat of violence, and trends such as these serve as a great reminder.

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