Joining other actors who have been in the spotlight recently for speaking out on current issues, Anushka Sharma, in an interview with film critic Anupama Chopra for the latter's YouTube channel, called out the rampant gender inequality in the Indian film industry.
The interview saw Sharma making some important points on the wage gap, superfluous, subsidiary roles compared to male leads, and discrimination that, on occasion, even comes down to male actors being accommodated in better hotel rooms than the women: "You know the guy is going to get a better room than you. And you're like, why does that need to happen? I'm sure every hotel has at least two really good rooms. You see it all the time," she said.
She went on to talk about the very obvious age difference between the leading men and their ladies in movies, and that one hardly sees women over a certain age in romantic leads, "Men can age, but they can still work, they can still be heroes... and they're still amazing and cool. And I'm fine with that. But women have to be young because they have to be desirable. And we're looking at women like that in films, because we have only shown mostly that to people, barring a few films that have happened. I'm not just talking about just objectification"tits and ass"but just what you're bringing to the film. Like other than your beauty and your nakhra, is there anything else you're bringing to the film?"
Sharma's opinion comes at a point where sexism in cinema is being put under the scanner internationally, right on the heels of Jennifer Lawrence's comment on equal pay earlier this year. Shah Rukh Khan, too has added to the conversation; in an interview with BBC after receiving an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Edinburgh, Khan reportedly admitted to the existence of wage gap in Bollywood, and agreed that women do not get equal recognition for their hard work. Khan was among five Bollywood celebrities who featured in Forbes' annual World's Highest Paid Actor (male) list for 2015; notably, none of the women from the country made it to the female counterpart of the list.
Chopra feels that it's imperative that the leading ladies of Bollywood start speaking up about these issues now. "It's important that the women in the film industry call out the sexism, especially the A-listers, because acknowledgment is the first step to change. Silence serves no one! Nothing will change overnight, but when an actor with clout speaks loudly and clearly, people listen. It also inspires other women to speak and perhaps even gives a few, the courage to ask for more."
Edited by rajwale - 9 years ago
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