Half face in shadow, Ranveer Singh, one of Bollywood’s hottest celebrities, stares at the camera. His deep gaze catches the viewer. Sitting on a rug, completely naked, her body is outlined against a gray background, without ever revealing her gender. On another shot, the actor abandons himself and shows himself, lying on his stomach, his eyes still riveted on the objective. A series follows in which he strikes a pose, this time in his underwear, his cascading black hair, reminiscent of the aesthetics of Greek statuary.
These photographs, published in the New York quarterly Paper Magazine and published on the star’s Instagram account, on July 22, provoked an avalanche of reactions, from praise to outrage to mockery. Mumbai police even opened an investigation on July 26 into obscenity and indecent assault on women – Victorian-era statutes – after two complaints were filed, one by a little-known NGO , Shyam Mangaram Foundation, and the other by Vedika Chaubey, a lawyer.
Since this publication, Indians have never stopped making fun of the images of the flamboyant celebrity. The Creation of AdamMichelangelo’s famous fresco painted on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, was thus diverted by Internet users to represent Ranveer Singh instead of the biblical character.
Still others had fun covering the silhouette of the husband of Deepika Padukone, the famous Indian actress and member of the jury of the 75e edition of the Cannes Film Festival, various and varied objects: a blanket, a scooter, vegetables… In the center of the country, residents even organized a collection of clothes for the star.
Fifty years after Burt Reynolds
Ranveer Singh’s nudes are a tribute to American actor Burt Reynolds. The 1970s sex symbol also posed naked in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan. At the time, the series of photos, conceptualized by Helen Gurley Brown, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, aimed to turn heads by having a naked man pose for female readers and thus mark “an important step in the sexual revolution”.
Fifty years later, stylist and artistic director Kshitij Kankaria imagined, at the end of 2021, staging Ranveer Singh in the same way, because he “is someone who excels in his field and who makes wacky choices when it comes to style”, he told Brut India.
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