By the time you read this, you will be well acquainted with Arshad Khan – you know, the chaiwala who had his face plastered all over the internet.
Being called “hot” and “beautiful” suffixed with “chaiwala” reeked of the bourgeois mentality of the masses and of reverse-sexism, but who can blame them? Isn’t beauty just reserved for the wealthy, and sexism for women?
No and no.
Sexism and reverse-sexism are two sides of the same coin, which need to be equally addressed.
The 18-year-old was photographed by Jiah Ali in Islamabad and immediately caught people’s eyes with his own striking blue-green ones. The media was replete with headlines like “This hot Pakistani chaiwala is a worldwide sensation” (Buzzfeed), “Hot chaiwala from Pakistan is too hot for the internet to handle” (MensXP), which objectified him.
What catapulted him to his fame was not just the fact that he has blue-green eyes, but also the fact that he’s from a lowly profession and yet is “conventionally” good-looking.
What if he had been a brown-eyed boy? And if he were dark, would he still be perceived as ‘handsome’?
“Oh look, a beautiful chaiwala, so exotic! Priyanka Chopra, what’s good?”
Clearly, his photo shook the assumption laid by film stars, wealthy folks and plastic surgeons that only the affluent can be beautiful.
After the photo went viral, the photographer went to find Khan again and snapped a photo with a phone camera – people wasted no time commenting again.
Does this objectification and having to live up to certain standards ring a bell? This is the exact reverse sexism that Khan is facing.
Women of course have sexism much worse, which is an established fact. But if we don’t want to be objectified, we should not objectify the opposite gender either.
That’s how feminism works. On the principle of equal treatment.
Saying it’s okay to sexualise a man because that’s what happens to women all the time is how being a dolt works.
Asking him to “enjoy the attention” and saying things can “only go up” from here are a clear invasion of a person’s privacy, especially when they have no clue about why they became famous in the first place or even about how technology works.
The way the media, men and women are objectifying Khan is the way celebrities’ children are treated when you look for their “hot pics”; an unwarranted encroachment into their lives.
From being uneducated due to familial problems and not knowing anything about technology, to becoming the model for an online brand, the 18-year-old has really found fame on steroids in the last four days.
Yet, these are also the very concerns which make him an easy target for getting duped due to his naivety.
In 1985, National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry took a photo captioned “Afghan girl” that got widely recognised and was featured on the cover page.
She also had striking eyes, which people found beautiful. While she may not have faced sexism, given the different setting of the photo, it was assumed she would have gotten some help and benefited from her sudden fame.
But, Sharbat Gula (read: Afghan girl) was found to be living in a remote village with her family, on fraudulent papers, while McCurry went on to become a celebrated photographer.
Khan’s case is unusual because the reverse-sexism can be seen as glorifying his non-sexual features, which one may deem “harmless”. However, attributing adjectives like “hot” and being surprised by his mere “chaiwala” profession is where the problem arises.
Class has nothing to do with beauty. Sexism is not just reserved for women.
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