Sania Mirza vs Veena Malik: This is exactly what two women should never do to each other
Sania Mirza and Veena Malik were what 'empowered women' should look like — until both decided to compete with each other in the Department of Absolute Ignominy on social media. We say 'social media' but that’s not really the problem. If two powerful, strong and independent women, whom people look up to, decide to tear each other apart in total indignity, even in their drawing rooms, balcony, parking lot or supermarket, it would be equally shameful.
Both Sania and Veena are celebrities and supposedly, both know how to tackle trolls on social media.
What they didn’t know was how to tackle each other.
Now, before delving into these muddied waters, let’s note that the stage was set when a video of Shoaib Malik and a few team members apparently revelling in a sheesha bar was widely circulated on social media. Sania Mirza, Shoaib’s wife, was also seen in the video. It was alleged that they were partying the night before the India-Pakistan match. That outing drew fierce ire online after Pakistan’s defeat, though later it was clarified that the event didn’t take place on the preceding night of the match.
But the Sania-Veena Twitter episode took off on a different trajectory altogether.
Actress Veena Malik expressed her concern on social media over Sania and Shoaib allegedly taking their child to a sheesha pub. Then, she voiced the concerns of many an armchair athletics enthusiast — the fitness issue of the concerned sportspersons.
The question Veena hid under the fig leaf of her 'concern' was how Sania, being an athlete herself, could allow her husband and apparently, her child too, to feast on 'hazardous' junk food? Well, Veena is completely wrong. We are well past the era of doting wives who must act like the secretaries/trainers of their nonchalant husbands, and then earn the moniker of ‘nag’.
But then Sania revealed how low she too could go — she broached the issue of Veena Malik’s apparently morphed photo on a magazine cover which, according to Sania, could be equally ‘hazardous’.
She deleted the tweet later.
The issue was Pakistan’s cricketing loss to India. But it digressed instead to an athlete’s food choices, a mother’s duty, an outsider’s jurisdiction, a woman's 'improper' photos and then, naturally, moral policing a woman. By another woman.
Sania and Veena, please understand — this is exactly how everyone wants women to bring each other down.
A line was finally drawn after the exchanges became utterly fiery. But it was quite late. Both women had hit out hard at each other's image, and in the process, also mawled how independent and empowered women everywhere should be.
Cheap thrills for some. Really sad for others.
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