Where are the boys in romantic song genre of India?

     Bollywood has been providing us with entertainment for ages with exquisitely written songs that highlight every inch of a woman's body. A chicken leg (tandoori murgi), rose petals (khilta gualaab), the spotless moon (chaudhavi ka chaand), and an Ajanta sculpture (Ajanta ki moorat) are only a few of the similes that explain the woman's celestial beauty.

While some of them are blatantly lewd and obscene, a few others demonstrate the songwriter's creative talent by portraying the woman as someone of unparalleled beauty rather than as a lifeless display. However, there aren't many of these songs where a woman isn't objectified. As they say, beauty is not limited to a woman's physical attributes but may also be applicable to all tiers of gender.

Unfortunately, Bollywood hasn't grasped this basic concept, as evidenced by the plethora of songs that solely promote the beauty of women. Bollywood has a very rare selection of songs in which a lady describes the attractiveness of her partner without considering the possibility of marriage in the future. These songs also avoid making the singer sound like a helpless damsel in distress. The songs are solely about her unfathomable sorrow at not being able to meet the person she loves, or about how fortunate and delighted she is to have found someone who fits her so well.

Bollywood women are shown as either desperately crying out for their long-lost love to return or as restlessly waiting for an unnamed human (mere khwaabo mei jo aaye) or lamenting in vain for her beloved to return (mohe bhul gaye saawariya). These songs' themes generally center on the woman's depressing circumstances. Furthermore, the minority who do discuss a man's beauty only discuss widely recognized personality qualities, such as "Ude jab zulfe teri," "kawaariyon ka dil machle," or "soldier meethi baate bolkar." These remarks merely serve to reinforce their masochism. In some of these, the woman even returns her lover's compliments (e.g., aap se bhi khoobsurat aapke andaaz hain). However, in other instances, she is depicted as the man's servant, only wanting to sacrifice herself for him (e.g., aapki nazron ne samjha, pyaar ke kaabil hume).

The storyline, which treats women as a man's visual toy rather than the other way around, is the main cause of this imbalance, but society's patriarchal structure also plays a significant part in it. These socially manufactured norms can be shown in movies when the heroine only flutters her eyelids and avoids the hero, while he is the only one who gets to "see" her.

This stems from the general notion that women are connected with "beauty," not males, since they are the objects of men's attention. Stated differently, only the guy has the legitimate right to see, touch, feel, love, and honor the woman (or his lover), but a woman's role is limited to acting as his nonexistent counterpart and weeping for him.

Male lyricists who prefer to quench their curious cravings by describing women in the way they do are also perhaps responsible for the male gaze, which is not limited to the male character in the story or the male viewers of the movie. Male authors produce the majority of the filthy lyrics, and they never stop comparing various female body parts in an unnatural way. This spying is obvious in every one of the item tunes.

Allowing more women lyricists to work in the literary and directorial sectors of the film business is the only way to address this injustice and ensure that more women will play leading roles in the movie finds the ideal way to convey her love or "desire" through actions that aren't too extreme.

It's interesting to note that every well-known music director and lyricist that we are aware of—such as Gulzar, Amitabh Bhattacharya or Javed Akhtar—is a man, and that there isn't a single well-known female music director or lyricist in the modern era. Only until female songwriters are given the opportunity to showcase their craft in mainstream cinema will the weeping female characters in the movies be able to sing the songs of their choosing—unless, in the process, they start to objectify males.