Sad how we reduced Priyanka Chopra to a pin-up over her gown

"Have you checked out Priyanka Chopra? She's rocking it in a sexy gown for a change. Thank God she didn't go all behenji at the Oscars or wear Abu Jani or Manish Malhotra (yawn!). Maybe that's why they seated her upfront and the camera showed her so many times! She fitted in," a girlfriend messaged urgently the minute the curtains went down on the Academy Awards telecast.

The Internet literally exploded within seconds with photo galleries and columns on Chopra's sartorial dressing sense, quoting how the 33-year-old actress had gushed to E! News about how she wanted "to be comfortable, for sure," in her Zuhair Murad white gown, and that the dress needed to be "something that lasts all evening-it's not ripping! Especially, because I am jumping right from the Oscars to the Vanity Fair party. I'll go straight to the airport in my gown-[I'll] change in the airport bathroom, and take a red-eye to start Baywatch [Monday] morning."

The hoopla is easy to understand since most Indian actresses who ever make it to international red carpet events, mostly as brand ambassadors of a cosmetic giant like L'Oreal for instance, are criticised sharply for not getting the look right. Their strongest critics are mostly women themeselves - fashion magazine editors, B-town stylists and TV anchors - who rip them apart in a scathing commentary. Katrina Kaif's debut appearance at Cannes last year in an Oscar De La Renta black lace dress for instance was the object of much public ridicule along with her flaming red tresses. The NYPost went on to describe her hair colour and gown as "awful". Much like Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's sweeping green Elie Saab gown was picked on and called a "rag", which looked as if it was a size or two small on her. Her green eyeliner too didn't go unnoticed.

In sharp comparison, the Quantico star previously scored brownie points at the 22nd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, breezing in a mermaid-styled, strapless, Monique Lhuiller gown, and shared the pictures on her Instagram account that revealed a closet spilling over with heels and a selfie taken enroute to the function. Chopra did the same for the People's Choice Awards too.

Despite Aishwarya's brush with international fame and her legendary beauty, and Vidya Balan's nine-yard draped Sabyasachi look, it's surprising that we chose to make a big hullabaloo over their fashion sense and not their acting prowess? This in a country where heroines are largely still no better than mere eye candy with the heroes hogging the limelight. Equal pay is a distant dream, as are women-centric scripts. The leading actress in Bollywood a reflection of the average woman on the street - who stands out for her clothes, her looks, how fair she is, for her breasts - her body. The pressure to be air-brushed perfect and thin, endorsed by a bevy of fashion blogs and magazines that reinforce a popular culture where women persecute women if we don't conform to a pre-conceived standard of outward beauty.

Let's be honest. Why is what Priyanka Chopra wore to the Oscars such a mammoth deal in the national media? Why did the same women now lauding her propensity for selecting international design greats, cruelly dissect Balan's sari bindi silver jhumka trademark look as being ghati and dehati?

I mean, look around, don't hundreds of Indian women ditch the national garb for western clothes on a daily basis?

Choosing convenience, comfort over their body image. Most of our actresses, even the regional stars, prefer sporting gowns and dresses at award functions, handpicked by stylists hungry to get them bigger brand endorsements and copying style trends set by the western fashion paparazzi?

Have we forgotten the way we ripped apart poor Mallika Sherawat whose international projects included The Myth and Politics of love calling her cleavage-showing Dolce and Gabbana gown  "slutty", and "trash magnet". Whether Sherawat's self-created, smutty, sex Goddess image betrayed her is a matter of debate, especially when pitted against Chopra's supposedly soaring Hollywood career.

But is there a chance we can be proud of our female icons by virtue of their achievements? How come no one's breathing a word about gutsy Pakistani documentary filmmaker,  Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, whose A Girl in the River was her second Oscar victory.

Hearing Chopra giggle and answer questions in accented Hindi about her representing Asian talent at the Oscars, one can't help question if Chinoy isn't equally Asian.

Or is it that she's a chubby, documentary filmmaker, not stereotypically expected to be a fashionista? Wouldn't we as women be prouder if our women-oriented films/actresses/women directors and technicians won something for a change on a global platform? Making a statement about cinema in this nation of more than a billion that still survives in western imagination as snake charmers, villains who rape, sexist humour, heroines in chiffon, a zillion playback songs and sleazy item numbers, and a bunch of aging, waxed, muscle rippling heroes romancing women young enough to be their grand-daughters?

Maybe, it's time we moved from skin deep to staying power. To wait and watch if Chopra survives the race - if the image makeover is more real than her Instagram popularity.