Bigg Boss 2 Tamil, episode 5: The show normalises sexism and that’s not ok

Bigg Boss 2 Tamil, episode 5: Senrayan gets harassed by Yaashika, Aishwarya and Mahat calls them ‘figures’.

On Thursday’s episode of Bigg Boss Tamil season 2, Mumtaz does the prep for next morning’s breakfast. As Day 4 begins, Nithya makes chapatis for the house and Mumtaz comes over to help. They again have a face-off when Nithya tells Mumtaz to inform her in advance about her schedule. Mumtaz tells her not to start fighting first thing in the morning, and asks if they can talk about it later. She leaves the kitchen as Mahat and Balaji help Nithya out. She also makes a heart-shaped chapati for a certain someone, leading to Mahat and others commenting about all the love in the air.

Bigg Boss 2 Tamil, episode 5: Nithya says it is okay for a man to get drunk and hit his wife once, but not everyday.

Then housemates get their third luxury budget task. The contestants are divided into a team of seven and everyone is told to write a story from their lives. The other team is expected to find out who wrote the story.

Aishwarya writes an emotional incident when her dad couldn’t afford to celebrate the puja because he didn’t have enough money. The housemates, however, make fun of the way the story is written in Tamil. Yaashika then tells the others to not laugh as it is a serious incident. They eventually find out that it was a true incident in Aishwarya’s life and everyone gets emotional.

Later, Balaji asks for rasam as he cannot have potatoes for some reason. Mumtaz explains that there are no ingredients and Janani, the captain, explains he cannot have potatoes. So she asks Nithya to make it, but Nithya refuses and Mahat makes it for Balaji.

The day in the house, however, stank of sexism. Beginning with Yaashika and Aishwarya harassing Senrayan to Mahat referring to Yaashika and Aishwarya as figures, the show showed casual sexism at its very worst. If instead of Yaashika and Aishwarya, two men had passed such comments, they would have been called out.

Mumtaz dances with Senrayan on her hit song Kattipudi Kattipudi da, but suddenly burst out in tears because Sharik reminds her of the nephew.

Senrayan continues speaking in Balaji’s defence to Nithya and she just asks, “Would you have said the same if you sister’s reputation was torn to bits in the media. Which husband would go to the media and show pictures to say that his wife was having an affair?”

As she champions the cause of women’s right and says it is not necessary to live for the society but to live for oneself, she also ruins everything by saying, “It’s okay if a husband gets drunk and hits the wife one day, but it’s not okay every day.”

This only plays to the regressive mindset of the society that we live in and this is not expected of a show that is hosted by Kamal Haasan who speaks for gender equality. Will he talk about this in the weekend episode?

The saving grace of this episode is the fourth task for the luxury budget. It felt like the contestants got the punishment that they deserve. From a sack of onions being cut to eggs being broken on each other heads, it is going to be fun to watch.

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