Twitterati annoyed with Bachchan’s sexist remark
But IMF’s chief economist Gita Gopinath is delighted with the compliment, says ‘this is special... I don’t think I will get over this’
Gita Gopinath, of the International Monetary Fund, may not have anticipated the feministic angst she let loose when she recently posted a video on her Twitter page.
The video clip from the quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati shows the host, Big B, asking a contestant to identify the name of organisation to which the person shown on the contestant’s monitor screen belongs to, even as Ms Gopinath’s image is displayed on the screen. “The economist seen in this image has been the chief economist of which organisation since 2019?” asks Amitabh. Then listing out four answer options, he adds, “Her face is so beautiful that no one can relate her to economy.”
In Gita’s Twitter post, she calls the video special. “Ok, I don’t think I will ever get over this. As a HUGE fan of Big B @SrBachchan, the Greatest of All Time, this is special! (sic),” she wrote. And Amitabh, in all graciousness, tweeted back saying he meant the compliment in all earnestness. But the micro-blogging site broke out in spams, calling Amitabh’s remarks sexist. “Don’t you think he was being sexist here? Etna khubsurat face or economy!!! What does that mean? (sic)” one user lashed out.
“Most of girls in economics, whom I know are beautiful. Bachchan needs to go in regular co-ed economics institutions (sic),” another wrote. Come to think of it, though, Big B’s remark seems ironically less degrading to women, if at all, than it may have been to, well, the subject called economics. Why should economics be bereft of good-looking experts? Perhaps now economists should stand up to that snub.