‘Beauty is much more than just a pretty face’
A new calendar featuring women on every page launched in India this week to celebrate International Women’s Day. But it isn’t full of conventional pinups, reports The Wall Street Journal India.
Bello, a Spanish word meaning beautiful and the name of the calendar, showcases 11 survivors of acid violence.
The report says the calendar is produced by Stop Acid Attacks, a New Delhi-based rehabilitation group for survivors of a form of violence that uses acid as a weapon, mostly against women.
Ashish Shukla, co-founder of the group says the calendar is designed to show that ‘beauty is much more than just a pretty face.’
India has some of the highest-recorded incidences of acid violence. Women are often targeted for turning down advances from men, rejecting marriage proposals or for failing to provide enough money and gifts to their husband’s family in marriages, among other kinds of domestic disputes.
A 2011 study on acid attacks in some South Asian countries said: ‘Acid attackers aims for a woman’s face in an attempt to destroy what many members of society consider to be one of her most important assets—her beauty.’
Shot over a period of six months by three photographers in eight different locations, the calendar features the gleaming smiles of the women in locations ‘that best define their dreams,’ said Shukla.
The calendar is for sale on paltan.in, a website created by Stop Acid Attacks to help volunteers of the campaign connect.
Stop Acid Attacks hopes to spend the money raised by the calendar’s sale to rehabilitate acid attack survivors.