Monalisa’s Viral Fame: The Male Gaze, the Fetishization of Brown Skin, and Patriarchal Control

During the Kumbh Mela 2025 in Prayagraj, Monalisa, a young working-class woman, became an unwitting sensation when her photo went viral on social media. Dubbed a “brown beauty” by admirers, her rise to fame was less a celebration of her individuality and more a testament to the pervasive male gaze, the fetishization of brown skin, and the patriarchal systems that continue to dehumanize women.

Instead of empowerment, Monalisa’s brief moment in the spotlight led to harassment, surveillance, and ultimately a forced retreat into invisibility.

Instead of empowerment, Monalisa’s brief moment in the spotlight led to harassment, surveillance, and ultimately a forced retreat into invisibility. Her story is more than just a personal tragedy – it is a lens through which we can examine the intersections of gender, class, work and race in a deeply unequal society.

The male gaze: objectification of female bodies as in the case of Monalisa

The overwhelming attention Monalisa received was not admiration but objectification. Her brown skin and perceived “exotic” beauty became the focus of social media discourse, reducing her to an aesthetic object rather than a person with agency. This reflects what feminist theorist Laura Mulvey famously called the “male gaze.” In her groundbreaking essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), Mulvey argues that women are often portrayed as spectacles “to be looked at,” with their value determined by how they can serve as objects of male pleasure.

Source: HerZindagi

Monalisa’s viral fame embodies this dynamic. Comments such as “she is a goddess” or “a rare beauty” marketed her looks while erasing her humanity. The same society that fetishized her because of her skin tone marginalizes women like her in everyday life. This duality, as Mulvey points out, is central to how patriarchy works: by defining women’s value through their visibility and desirability, rather than their individuality.

Brown skin is fetishized while colorism is ignored

The fetishization of brown-skinned women is a colonial and neoliberal legacy. Feminist scholars bell hooks offer a critical perspective to understand this phenomenon. In her book Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), hooks writes, “The commercialization of otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new joy, more intense and satisfying than normal ways of acting and feeling.” In other words, women of color are becoming often reduced to symbols of “exotic” beauty and their racialized bodies transformed into consumer goods.

Monalisa’s story shows how this fetishization continues. Her brown skin, celebrated as “beautiful” on social media, was not a celebration of her individuality but a commercialization of her racial identity. At the same time, the structural realities of colorism that oppress brown women remain unchallenged. As author Kavita Krishnan argues, “Fetishizing brown women does not destroy colorism; it reinforces the very hierarchy that devalues ​​her in other contexts.” Monalisa was visible because her skin tone was considered trendy, but this visibility did nothing to challenge the systemic discrimination against women with darker skin tones in India and globally.

Social Media: From Visibility to Exploitation by Monalisa

Social media, often touted as a democratizing force, proved to be a double-edged sword in Monalisa’s case. Her image spread quickly, but the new visibility came with relentless harassment. Strangers sent her inappropriate messages, trolled her online, and treated her as a public spectacle. Social media platforms did not protect them but rather enabled their exploitation.

Source: FII

Feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser’s critique of neoliberalism in Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History (2013) provides a framework for understanding this. Fraser explains how neoliberal systems often co-opt feminist ideals such as visibility and empowerment while reinforcing structures of oppression. “Visibility,” Fraser writes, “becomes a trap when it is divorced from actual agency and power.” Monalisa’s visibility on social media reinforced her vulnerability rather than empowering it. It made her a commodity for others to consume, rather than a subject with agency and autonomy.

Patriarchal Control: Monalisa’s security at the expense of her freedom

As the harassment escalated, Monalisa’s father intervened. Concerned for her safety, he took her home and removed her from the public eye. Although this may seem like a protective gesture, it reflects the deeply patriarchal logic of controlling women’s lives to protect them.

In her book Seeing Like a Feminist (2012), sociologist Nivedita Menon criticizes this form of control: “Being ‘safe’ in a patriarchal society often means being invisible.” Menon emphasizes that society often combats the symptoms of harassment – by restricting women’s mobility or visibility – rather than the root cause, namely male demands. By sending Monalisa home, her family ensured her safety, but it came at the expense of her independence. The perpetrators of the harassment faced no consequences, while Monalisa was punished with isolation.

The economic dimension: work, class and mobility

Monalisa’s story also intersects with issues of class, work, and the ongoing surveillance of women’s right to pleasure themselves in public spaces. As a young working-class woman, attending the Kumbh Mela was perhaps one of the few escapes from the drudgery of everyday life. For many women like her, the opportunities to break out of their everyday roles and simply enjoy life are few and far between.

Source: FII

However, even these moments of joy and freedom for women are rarely free from the gaze and control of a patriarchal society. Monalisa’s experience shows how women’s mobility and presence in public spaces is often interpreted through the lens of the male gaze. The viral photo that made her famous also resulted in objectification, relegating her to an aesthetic spectacle rather than a person asserting her right to fully participate in a cultural event. Feminist geographer Gillian Rose notes that “the mere presence of women in public spaces is often seen as a challenge to the patriarchal order” that seeks to define when and how women can move freely.

Feminist geographer Gillian Rose notes that “the mere presence of women in public spaces is often seen as a challenge to the patriarchal order” that seeks to define when and how women can move freely.

Feminist economist Devaki Jain has argued that “economic freedom is the cornerstone of women’s autonomy.” In her work Women, Development, and the UN (2005), she emphasizes that women’s ability to make independent decisions – including the decision to participate in leisure or cultural events – is closely linked to their economic and social agency.

For Monalisa, what could have been an empowering moment of visibility and self-expression became another reminder of how limited women’s freedoms are. Her brief fame could have opened doors to opportunity, but instead the patriarchal response to her harassment reinforced her marginalization.

Monalisa’s experience is not an isolated incident; it is a symptom of larger systemic problems. Colorism, the preference for lighter skin tones, is still deeply rooted in societies like India. Women with brown skin are simultaneously fetishized and marginalized because their value depends on how they fit into Eurocentric beauty standards.

Furthermore, because neoliberalism commodifies everything—including the body—women of color are marketed as “exotic” and celebrated for their aesthetic appeal, while their lived realities remain ignored. This echoes what Kimberlé Crenshaw describes in her theory of intersectionality: “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, an analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot account for the particular ways in which women of color are subordinated , not sufficiently taken into account.” ‘