In the summer of 2020, while the whole world was grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, Pakistanis were sent into a frenzy by a work of fiction.
Churrails by Asim Abbasi came in like a cultural reckoning. Four women declared war on the patriarchy by donning burqas, not out of piety but for power. As a Pakistani woman, that was the closest I had ever felt to being represented in the mainstream media, and I loved it.
Finally, here was a story that gave us protagonists that were flawed, enjoyed their vices and were angry. Women who didn’t live their lives trying to be politically correct. They fought with one another. They were crass and even profane.
Pretty soon, the series received massive backlash that very quickly turned aggressive. It was because Churrails dared to do what no other production in Pakistan had ever done before: present a female-led narrative that created space for the protagonists to be something Pakistanis still refuse to acknowledge women as — messy. These women were vengeful, loud — and still deserving of a story.
Why must the Pakistani woman in our TV dramas always be either a paragon of quietly suffering perfection, pitted against another woman or have to prove she is worthy of justice? Where are the real, flawed, angry women who can just be?
The same can be said for Joyland by Saim Sadiq — a film that made history in more ways than one. It was a haunting, tender tale of desire and identity creation centred around a trans stage dancer. It was raw and real. But instead of applauding the genius of it, it was bruised, battered and eventually censored. Both these stories are pluralistic portrayals of the truth of women’s lives. The truth we continue to flinch at.
While Pakistanis failed to applaud characters such as Batool or Jugnu for their defiance, elsewhere in the world, characters such as Kim Wexler from Better Call Saul and Fleabag dared to bare their pain and verbalise their very human fallibilities, loud and unmasked.
“I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist,” Fleabag says in all her masterful, fourth wall-breaking glory. She thinks out loud, admits all her imperfections and owns them. But what good does it do to have an empowered character come on screen and boldly speak the unspeakable? It’s not only the shock value, it’s the semantics.
According to Fleabag, calling oneself a feminist implies high virtue. But in this moment of raw honesty, she confesses that she’s nowhere near perfect enough to be one. The dialogue does not insult what feminism tries to accomplish; rather it makes it inclusive of even the most tragic, self-sabotaging of anti-heroines — thereby opening up to a broader array of what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. It gives Fleabag the agency to self-loathe and still be endearingly relatable.
In Pakistani TV, the space to explore the inner workings of both saints and sinners is generously extended to the male protagonists. We psycho-analyse their crimes and sympathise with their violence. A good example of this is Qarz-i-Jaan, which started out strong but at the end bent over backwards to humanise the radically disruptive Ammar Bakhtiyar.
Fictional women, on the other hand, are either oversimplified or pitted against one another. When Mere Paas Tum Ho aired, the whole nation rejoiced at the leading lady being smacked and humiliated by another woman. Some argued it was in line with the context of the story. But that begs the question, why did the story set up a premise that allowed this kind of woman-on-woman violence to feel not only justified, but gratifying?
In truth, it seems we are scared of outraged female characters. It is only acceptable for the female characters to lash out when they have earned it — perhaps when it is graphic and gruesome enough to be lent an ear to. For matters as trivial as sexism, it isn’t deemed sensible to be loud and demand an audience.
So what does it really say about us that the only angry women we accept are the victims? It says that women can only be frustrated out in the open when they’ve been violated and have the evidence to back it up. If it is anger stirred by ambition or rebellion, it ceases to exist on the Pakistani TV screen.
On a tangent, one can also argue that, to have their protest registered, female characters must be driven by the pinnacle of excellence. They must be extraordinary, every which way. Anything below that, or bordering on mediocre, is brushed under the rug. It is these impossible standards that force women to dilute their own convictions.
Female characters that say the quiet parts out loud are still what our screens are too small for. But what is it that we’re so scared their inner monologues may bring to light? Is it their piercing and unfiltered dissatisfaction with the way they are treated? Or is it the discomfort of watching them voice what they were expected to keep hidden? Because when harsh truths are spoken, the illusion of control is lost.
A Pakistani heroine or female protagonist must exist to make a point, a statement. They don’t have the luxury to simply be, with all their shortcomings. But that is exactly what creates a suffocating dichotomy, through which we view even the women around us. We begin to hold the supposedly empowered ones to a higher standard of behaviour, almost demanding perfection. Those we consider powerless are also expected to be sacrificial, modest martyrs draped in self-righteousness. It is a painfully inaccurate representation of the human condition.
On a broader societal level, these limiting binaries condition us to look for the perfect victims. Maybe even giving us implicit permission to blame women when they do get harmed, because we are not accustomed to seeing them as imperfect beings who have every right to defend themselves and be legislatively empowered.
Instead, we view them as vessels that need to prove they deserve the social justice scales to be tipped in their favour. Kind of like Khirad of Humsafar, who earned the audience’s sympathy by suffering with quiet dignity. All of this is detrimental because what we ask of fictional women often mirrors what we expect of real ones.
It’s the politics of worthiness. The plight of women stops being about what happens to them and, instead, becomes a quest for them to prove they were virtuous enough for it to matter. When cultural propriety becomes a condition, justice becomes a spectacle, not a right.
If we are to evolve past the mechanics of covert censorship, we need to write better stories, better characters. So what would better writing look like? It would entail writing stories that ask uncomfortable questions. Stories that make the audience sit with their biases and question them. Screens that allow women the grace to be wrong. To exist without being either a feminist symbol or a cautionary tale.
Personally, I would love to see female characters placed in the landscape of political thWWrillers or in the back alleys of rebellion. Successful mothers who resent motherhood. Characters that are dangerously human. Female characters need to have inner turmoil that unfolds on our screens. There must be room for contradictions and identity crises to be explored.
It is healthy for young girls to grow up knowing they don’t have to be ashamed of their own minds, that they can live their truth. Let there be rage, denial, grief, longing — the full spectrum.
Published in Dawn, ICON, June 22nd, 2025