Actress and writer Gilu Joseph on the cover of Grihalxmi’ Malayalam edition.
Gilu Joseph, the model featured on the cover of Malayalam magazine Grihalakshmi breastfeeding a child, on Sunday welcomed the Kerala High Court’s refusal to identify the picture as ‘obscene’. “I’m really happy with the judgement because we live in a society where art is not always appreciated in the right sense. Personally, I’m much more than my body,” she told ANI.
The bench of former chief justice Antony Dominic and Dama Seshadri Naidu dismissed a writ petition filed by Felix MA saying, “what may be obscene to some may be artistic to other; one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric.” The court, in its order, said that it does not see obscenity in the picture or find anything objectionable in the caption for men.
“We looked at the picture with the same eyes we look at the paintings of artists like Raja Ravi Varma. As the beauty lies in the beholder’s eye, so does, obscenity perhaps,” the bench has observed.
The cover of Grihalakshmi was aimed at trying to normalise breastfeeding in public and found support of many on the social media, even as it irked some others.
The cover of Grihalakshmi was aimed at trying to normalise breastfeeding in public and found the support of many on the social media, even as it irked some others. Those who objected to the photograph questioned the magazine’s decision to hire a model to do the photoshoot with a child who was not even hers.
Joseph, speaking to indianexpress.com, had said then, “I have only done things that I have believed is right for me. I must have failed, but I have no regrets. Women should breastfeed freely, without any sense of fear or inhibition and that is my message in the article too, but people began criticising even without reading what I had to say.”