Go home, Hamza Ali Abbasi

Lollywood’s very own Hamza Ali Abbasi is ashamed he had to act out romantic scenes with actors. Or according to him, not actors but “women in bikinis”. Oh poor Hamza, so sorry you had to do that. Were you forced? Was a gun put on your forehead? How can you be ashamed of acting according to a script you were given well before the shoot? Why did you accept the role? Ever heard of the term professionalism? Better yet, ever thought how your co-actors would feel when you decide to throw their professional prowess out of the window and reduce them to what they were asked to wear for a shoot?

Women in bikinis! Were they just that for you? Not fellow colleagues, not fellow actors but just ‘women in bikinis’? Why is it so easy for men to reduce an entire woman pejoratively to what she is wearing? They have professions, they have lives. The fact is that Mr Abbasi claims to be a well-educated man who was also part of a political party, and he turned around and passed such remarks, is what’s disappointing. It shows the mindset some of the people in our society have. How openly and easily can one put a colleague down without realising the consequences. Being an actor, especially for such a large audience, comes with a lot of responsibility Mr Abbasi. You have to be really careful about what you say because your words can stick around and most likely will not be forgotten and may also ruin the image people have of you. Being in a position where you are, where so many people follow you and look up to you, you really can’t be passing such remarks. And you say you are ‘proud’ of women who don’t ‘take off’ their clothes in item numbers? Who are you to put them down like that? What exactly were you wearing? Tiny shorts, right? Were you not shirtless? Should we go around social media making a fool out of you?

Being an actor also comes with a choice; if you don’t want to be in a scene where you have been asked to act with ‘women in bikinis’ then you speak with your team, you tell them and you opt out of it. You can’t possibly do a scene and then publicly announce how embarrassed you are for doing it. You are responsible for the choices you make. If you feel you were not comfortable, rather, had you not been comfortable, you wouldn’t have acted in those scenes… but you did. There are actors like Fawad Khan, who openly voice their thoughts and their reservations in a sophisticated manner and choose not to make their fellow actors feel uncomfortable or shame them. Maybe you need to learn a thing or two from them?

Those women are actors, they did their job. Just like you did. Stop shaming them. Be a little professional, will you?

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2015.