For the longest time, Bollywood has been presenting women as shallow characters who are, at best, the supporting artists.
It is of late that more women-centric films with a female gaze have made it past the threshold.
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Previously, many female characters were portrayed through a male gaze, resulting in them being sexualized most of the time. Even women having a crisis were somehow made to look sexy!
Progressive and open-minded women were shown to be arrogant or had strong vices.
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In a recent interview, Richa Chadha pointed out this shallow depiction of progressive women on screen, getting people talking about it again. She talked about how particularly during the 2010s and 2012s progressive women were shown to be someone who loves to drink, smoke and party.
While some women did do all those things, Bollywood got into a habit of portraying that these were the only things that progressive women did.
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The characters were written in such a way that their successes or strengths weren’t highlighted at all. As if an open-minded woman was capable of only smoking and drinking, nothing more.
Richa also talked about how a woman who was having an emotional crisis on screen somehow used to end up on the dance floor, looking very hot while her mascara ran down her face.
Such visuals were so common in films of that decade that they became a stereotype.
One could even say that the image of a strong progressive modern woman was so difficult for them to digest that they had to ruin their imagery by associating it with smoking, drinking and partying.
The irony is that, if a male character did all those things, he would be labelled as successful, whereas the woman would have to face hatred for the same actions.
While over time Bollywood has tried to look at female characters through a female gaze, Richa’s comment has sparked a conversation about how women are perceived in cinema as well as how the audience looks at such characters.
