This is one of those things, which seems logical on the face of it, but quickly disintegrates once fantasy smacks into the brick wall that is reality.
Someone in CNN-IBN probably had a reasonable thought - Women are harassed no matter what clothes they were. We should tell people that. How they chose to go about it, however, was probably the worst way this sensitive topic can be approached - with a crass request and hash-tag.
Though we have no way of knowing, it seems like probably some social media 'expert' decided that they need to kick things up a notch and increase 'user engagement' and 'participation'. And what are those kids doing all the time nowadays? Selfies! Let's go with it. And thus the tweet (pictured above) was born - complete with a suitably 'hot' outlines of curvy, slim women making poses.
Or at least, that is what seems to be the mental process behind CNN-IBN's ridiculous request that women upload selfies of themselves wearing the clothes in which they were harassed. (Presumably posing and making duck faces is optional.)
We can all agree that it is important to prove as fake the disgusting idea that a woman 'asks' for harassment because of the clothes she is wearing. In fact there is ample evidence that a woman in India will be harassed no matter what she is wearing, doing, eating, drinking or speaking. Women in India are harassed. Period.
And there is no more demeaning way to make this point than to ask victims to send pictures of themselves so that hordes of online twits can dissect their fashion choice and debate whether that saree was 'hot' enough to ask for unwanted attention or a possible rape attempt.
Also, what sort of logic demands that a victim of sexual harassment should take a picture of themselves so that they can later say "See, it wasn't my fault!". Since apparently the concept is vague for CNN-IBN, let us spell it out - Women do not need to provide any sort of explanation for why they were harassed.
It is important for News media to engage the online audience. But in certain topics, the desire to be 'viral' must be curbed by a heavy dose of common sense and decency. Advice CNN-IBN should probably take to heart.
Twitter was not amused. Here is a sampling for the backlash.