Vidya Balan: Society Finds Flaws in Women, People Said I Lost My Charm After Losing Weight

Vidya Balan, who has always been a supporter of women rights and spoken against body shaming, says that society tends to find flaws in everything that a woman does.

Actor Vidya Balan has always spoken for the rights of women and now when she’s promoting her next titled Mission Mangal, she has once again taken an opportunity to highlight how a female actor gets typecast easily than their male counterparts. The actor plays a scientist in a film which is based on India’s mission to reach the Mars orbit. The film also boasts of a starry female cast including Taapsee Pannu, Sonakshi Sinha and Nithya Menon along with Vidya. Actors Akshay Kumar and Sharman Joshi join the women in the film in important roles.

In her recent media interaction, Vidya opened up on how female actors face discrimination as compared to male actors. She said that women, since ages, have been subjected to unnecessary criticism to demotivate them from being successful. She said that people tend to find flaws in everything that a woman tries to do because by doing that, they try to pull the efforts of the woman. She was quoted by news agency IANS saying, “I think women always get typecast in everything that they do. That is ridiculous. I think society tends to find flaws in women so that they do not fly high.”

She took her own example to explain how society doesn’t seem happy and satisfied with anything that a woman takes up. Vidya revealed that when a female actor starts doing strong roles, she is typecast as a ‘serious actor’ and when she performs a song-and-dance film, she is labelled as a ‘non-serious’ actor.

“When an actress does five scenes and three songs in a film, people start saying she only does fluffy stuff and no serious roles. When she does substantial roles in serious films or female-centric films, she gets the tag of a serious actress. When I lost weight, people start saying I had lost my charm. I’d wonder how can they say that because I had worked really hard to lose weight,” explained Vidya.

The actor has been speaking against body shaming and encouraging women to feel comfortable in their skin since she began to find her feet in the industry.