She was a hero, not the kind everyone understood or admired, not the kind everyone idolised and definitely not the kind we’ve been taught to call heroes. While gender stereotypes have been around since the very inception of mankind, once in a while something comes along that smashes the idea right into its very gut. In one of her very last posts, Qandeel said: “As women we must stand up for ourselves. As women we must stand up for justice. I believe I am a modern day feminist... I am just a woman with free thoughts free mindset and I LOVE THE WAY I AM."
Her real name was Fauzia Azeem. Born into an ordinary conservative family, she married young and walked out of that marriage because it didn’t work out. She had a son too. In her own words, she walked away “to be able to stand on my own two feet, to do something for myself." So, basically, she escaped an abusive marriage as a teen. Too bold for you?
She soon became a starlet in Pakistan and around the world with her pictures and posts that Pakistan deemed ‘bold’ in a nation where sexual openness is almost equal to being inhumane. She gave us moments of laughter and for some a moment of pleasure through her posts. She not just spoke about the patriarchy but also exposed the hypocrisy of mullahs in a way nobody ever dared.
She was so much more than an ‘attention-seeker’ on Instagram who was ‘trying to invite men with her risqué videos’. She was the daylight that not just her country but even our nation should be fed face to face with more often. She was a young woman who didn’t abide by the set norms and decided to break the boundaries in her own way. She was a human who had full rights to do what she felt was right. She had ambitions which were probably different than most of us have at this age but nobody has the right to call them wrong. But then, how dare you be born ambitious when you have a vagina?
There have been other women who tried to rise but were mercilessly silenced by the patriarch mindset that has been engraved ever since. After all, it takes a lot of men to kill one Qandeel Baloch! There may never be a woman as undaunted as her in a nation that is used to take lives in the name of ‘honour killing’. What honour are we referring to? The one that satisfies male pride? Or the one that bashes everything that is a detour from the stereotypes? Or the one that continues to take lives regardless of the disgrace it brings to a community?
How fragile is this society’s amour propre that a young lady’s freedom is regarded as 'shame'?
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