It’s been 2021 for eight months now, but YouTuber and self-titled motivational speaker Ranveer Allahbadia clearly did not get the memo - he seems to be stuck in the same train of thought from a few decades ago. It’s been a tough couple of years for everyone, what with a global pandemic raging, but Allahbadia has managed to carry forward the long-sustained tradition of casual, seemingly harmless brand of sexism all the way to this year. In a recent Twitter post, he shared a photo of a woman in Indian ethnic attire and earrings, captioning it with “This vibe" and several heart emojis. That was all fine so far: He was expressing his preferences on social media. But then he went on to add, “Any girl becomes a 100x more attractive in a long kurti paired with those big earrings. Life hack that brings all guys to their knees".
Any girl becomes a 100x more attractive in a long kurti paired with those big earrings.Life hack that brings all guys to their knees 🙏🏼
— Ranveer Allahbadia (@BeerBicepsGuy) July 31, 2021
Twitter, obviously, was quick to shut him down. Many Indian women wasted no time in pointing out this “evolved" brand of misogyny Allahbadia was promoting.
21st centuries modern, evolved, sweet misogyny.— manishasinghsharma (@ssmanisha) August 7, 2021
Any man becomes 100x less attractive when they’re misogynists. smh— Tracy Facey (@HeyTracyFacey) July 31, 2021
You are 100% right… Here i got you your soul mate. pic.twitter.com/iJF1hEFuXI— Siddhesh 🇮🇳 (@Sid_Bhoir) August 8, 2021
you and Mukesh ambani had the same 10 seconds and you wrote this tweet with that 10 seconds. so sad— haroun (@DorkyMcDarkFace) August 6, 2021
One user also pointed out the very obvious Bollywood connect that this type of kurti-and-earrings attire has.
Thats coz it is the utmost feminine, pious image put in your head since you started watching bollywood. It doesn't mean she isn't going to be bossy, ambitious and self dependent.— Sweta A (@shwetz09) July 31, 2021
Twitterati also did not miss the harmful bearings of such a tweet on the Indian society specifically. Harking to an incident involving a girl being thrashed to death for wearing jeans in Uttar Pradesh, the user pointed out the blatant implications of Allahbadia’s tweet and what that can entail.
N in a country where a 16yr old girl was killed by her relatives for wearing jeans….. u hiding ur misogyny in garb of an innocent tweet/opinion is just 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻— 👩🏻⚖️ (@AdvocateNaari) August 11, 2021
This is not the first time that Allahbadia, who goes by ‘BeerBiceps’ on YouTube, has said something problematic: In April this year, he tweeted something that went viral and drew the ire of social media. “If your entire opinion about someone is decided according to their political opinion, the problem is with your political opinion," he tweeted, before going on to declare himself “apolitical". Allahbadia seemed to have missed yet another memo that in this century (and every other) it’s not cool to ‘not care’ about the world around you and its political manifestation.
Ranveer Allahbadia has over 2,61,000 followers on Twitter. No matter the intent of his tweet, he does have the onus of responsibility of how his content affects the people who read it. It seems like a positive thing that Twitterati are stepping up to shut down this type of casual sexism Allahbadia, perhaps involuntarily, promoted. The casual sexism builds up through the generations and changes form and language, but perpetuates the same myths of patriarchy.
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