By Tarushi Varma:
Ever felt a refreshing blast of cold breeze hit you? Well, that feeling describes perfectly the effect our new hero has on us. Kangana Ranaut, who so far had the quintessential small town girl reputation, has proved herself to be a complete badass. Expressing her bold and stimulating opinion in various interviews, she is as feminist as they get.
Kangana was brought up in a conservative joint family where traditions such as the family males eating first prevailed; she sought it on herself to disobey every one of them. She has always believed in mutual respect and equality and hence to accept such an apparent disparity in people on basis of gender is hard for her. She told The Times of India in an interview, “My father slapped me for the first time at 15 and I told him, ‘If you slap me I will slap you back’. I felt raising your hand on anybody is inappropriate and I always had a high regard for myself”
Even as an adult, she was considered to be a misfit by her contemporaries and employers alike in the initial years of her career. Even though she had to struggle to make a place for herself in this awfully competitive industry, which is otherwise also known for its male privilege, she never gave up her values. And today, she has accomplished a relative high in her successful career with sensational roles in Fashion, Rajjo and Revolver Rani, where she plays the courageous womyn who stand up for themselves and make a difference in the heavily male dominated world. Then came Queen, her most recent release, which was made through a feminist spectacle portraying her as a simple Indian womyn who self-discovers her true liberating self.
Not just her roles, even her unconventional opinions which she expresses fearlessly, challenge the traditional perspective. Don’t believe me? Wait till you hear her take on the whole institution of marriage, “Why do people get married? I don’t understand the whole setup and the reason behind it. Especially for girls, I see it as a very big problem. Because they are never encouraged to be something. The main instruction was, ‘how are you going to behave in your in-laws house’, even when I was tiny. We shouldn’t have a ready setup to be given to a man, like a fully trained dog to take care of the house.”
Kangana openly talks about herself and her freedom is the dearest thing to her, which she would never compromise. She displays tremendous self conviction and self reliance, and encourages her audience to the same. Above all, she teaches us to bravely be ourselves and love ourselves for who we really are.
Finally, it is safe to say that she a brilliant womyn, incredibly talented, even giving some of the big hot-shots of Bollywood a run for their money. All this while, she achieved her entire success single handedly, without even the support of her family. She is a worthy role model for all the Queens and Rajjos out there who struggle everyday to make a difference to their lives.
It’s like she says, “We need to raise our girls like superheroes, like we do our men.”