LAHORE – Iman Ali has taken to social media and criticized the withdrawal of people from Lux Style Awards as being nothing but a mere publicity stunt.
Taking to her Instagram on Wednesday, Iman said “fame and respect are supposed to be earned through hard work” not by “childish walkouts and social media posts playing judge, jury and executioner”.
“Our sense of entitlement to quickly judge anyone and jump to conclusions worrisome especially in this age of social media. A platform that has made it too easy for some to become a part of controversy or join a bandwagon and become famous overnight and potentially ruin anyone’s life or body of work in minutes,” said Iman.
Model Eman Suleman, one of the first nominees to drop out of the awards, says Ali deleted her comments on the post.
“As I said before, we’ve worked very hard and it saddens me to see that you denigrate our efforts. What about the victims who have suffered at the hands of perpetrators in this industry, and other workplaces; they never got the chance to work hard and achieve what they could instead the victims ostracised,” she said in a second comment that has not been deleted.
The Lux Style Awards is the largest award ceremony held annually in Pakistan since 2002. The awards celebrate “style” in the Pakistani entertainment industry.
The ceremony is the oldest and the most prominent film event dedicated to Pakistani television, fashion and film industry in Pakistan. The awards are voted on by both the public and a committee of experts.
Prior to 2019’s Lux style awards, many Pakistani celebrities and Fashion brands including Generation had stepped out of the LSA’s nomination due to the #Metoo movement.
Later the film jury of the Lux Style Awards 2019 issued a statement early Thursday (yesterday, giving their viewpoint after several nominees opted out of participating in the award ceremony over the nomination of an alleged harasser.
“Over the past 18 years, the Lux Style Awards have been nurturing Pakistani excellence in fashion, films, music and drama. Over these two decades, the Lux Style Awards nominations have been decided by an unbiased, independent and transparent jury of industry peers and critics,” the statement read.
Stating that neither “the Lux Style Awards nor Unilever Pakistan has ever intruded into the independence of the jury’s position”, the statement added, “In 2019, the Lux Style Awards have been surrounded by dialogue around nominees involved in a matter of sexual harassment. The LSA film jury joins the Lux Brand and Unilever Pakistan in condemning all acts of intolerance, discrimination or harassment..
