LUX-Style Awards have been a pioneer in honoring the entertainment industry. It is all set to host the 21st edition of the awards, however, it recently became a part of a controversy when Meesha Shafi pointed out that LUX has failed to recognize any female musical talent.
Meesha Shafi posted a story that called out the brand saying, “Not a single woman nominated in the LSA music nominations. Erasure at this scale (there is an exceptionally high number of nominations this time) of the entire female population occupying the Pakistani music industry is unjustifiable and highly problematic,”
She also demanded that LUX should be held accountable for this.
This was followed by her fellow musicians, who also voiced their concern about the alleged discrimination.
Maria Unera while acknowledging Shafi’s criticism wrote, “You’ll have women sell you soaps and products but y’all don’t have the decency to nominate women in music? Should be ashamed of yourselves. I’m not even surprised anymore at this point, just straight up disappointed.”
Momina Mustehsan also spoke on the matter saying “By completely ignoring every female contributor in music, we are depriving 110 million women of the representation and inspiration they truly deserve to see and be. Coming from a female centric company like Unilever Pakistan that has made commendable efforts towards Gender Equality within their company by having strong female presence across their workforce and especially at executive positions — it doesn’t sit right,” she wrote while demanding the Lux Style Awards do better and that they must not put Pakistani women in music on mute.”
How Did LUX Respond To The Criticism?
Their manager Fareshteh Aslam responded to the criticism by commenting on Instagram saying, ” This is a submissions list. Whoever submitted is on this list. Nominations will be announced after voting. Finally a winner will be announced.”
The Plot Twist
Interestingly, LUX posted on Instagram asking for a submission portfolio on 10th August.
Then in a separate post which was made on 15th October, they asked the audience to vote.
LUX Style also thanked the people for submitting their portfolios
Furthermore, Meesha Shafi pointed out that some of her male colleagues have made it to the list without even submitting a portfolio.
Pakistani female musicians have been garnering global recognition. The fact that out of 82 nominations amongst 4 categories in the music awards, LUX didn’t include even one of them leaves a big question mark on the award platform.
FUCHSIA reached out to LUX Style Awards, and they had clarified that so far the music category for nominations had not gone up; these are only submissions. The nominations will be decided after the voting is done. Once the voting is done on the submissions, then the nominations will be announced and finally the winner will be announced at the LUX Style Awards. Presently, the LSA website is down for maintenance. They plan to initiate voting once it is up and working.
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