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Maria Furqan is a content creator from Karachi who posts fashion videos on her Instagram account with a following of over 70,000. Ranging from her workout sessions recorded in her gym, to paid promotions and brand endorsements, to dance videos that she makes from a corner in her bedroom, Maria does not adhere to the typical idea of morality as dictated by the Pakistani society in the way she dresses and acts on her public profile. But that is also why she has been a subject of a lot of moral policing and unwanted scrutiny of her body and clothing in her content, but nothing budges her now. “I never gave a stranger on the internet the power to silence me,” she says.
The mere idea of not letting others’ opinion affect her is considered an act of rebellion according to the Pakistani society’s standards of morality, but Maria looks at it as her way of taking control of her life and the choices she makes for herself. The comments that she receives on her videos are often hateful that target or criticise her personhood, but because she has not let it change her, most of the times the comments are positive and directed towards her content rather than the way she dresses or what she does in the videos.
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