Bollywood has a long history of making their female characters quite unidimensional. They’re mostly created to please or entertain the male gaze and unfortunately, that often leads to them becoming a target to a whole lot of misogyny.
So we’ve compiled a list of female characters who were criticized unfairly for… well, being human! Here take a look.
1. Natasha Arora – ZNMD
Played by Kalki Koechlin, Natasha Arora was judged quite harshly and made out to be a controlling and annoying girlfriend. But was it that or was it the fact that we as a society love to hate on women for being interested in marriage. Natasha misunderstood the proposal, but was that her fault? Why was she painted in a negative light for something that anyone in her position could have thought?
2. Meera Sahni – Cocktail
Meera Sahni (Diana Penty) was villainized for ‘stealing ,’ Gautam (Saif Ali Khan) from Veronica (Deepika Padukone). Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather, the complications between all three of them was a result of an entanglement of human emotions plus Gautam being confused and unclear AF.
3. Alizeh – Ae Dil Hai Mushkil
From what I can recall, Alizeh (Anushka Sharma) did not lead Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor) on in any way. She was very clear and communicative about her intentions from the beginning so the hate she got was incredibly misplaced!
4. Zoya – Raanjhanaa
We’re not saying Zoya (Sonam Kapoor) did not have toxic traits or tendencies. What we’re saying is, if a male character is toxic, he has ‘layers’ to his personality but if a female character is toxic she’s not only toxic, but a vamp of a sort.
5. Meghna – Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na
Meghna (Manjari Fadnnis) was portrayed as the ‘childish,’ and ‘annoying,’ kind of girlfriend. Which is a whole other trope of women Bollywood likes to churn out once in a while to denounce a female character so that she’s less liked than the male lead or the other love interest.
6. Tina Malhotra – Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m really seeing a pattern here. It seems Bollywood really likes to play the pitting-women-against-each-other card.
7. Tina Kapoor – Mujhse Dosti Karoge!
Tina (Kareena Kapoor) was portrayed as the confident, popular girl who stole Raj (Hrithik Roshan) from Pooja (Rani Mukherji). It seems to me that the film played on how much society likes to hate on confident women. Tina was just a little too confident. She had just a little too much spring in her step, she was just too much for the audience to be liked.
8. Sweety – Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety
Why was Sweety (Nushrratt Bharuccha) villainized for wanting to live out a wholesome relationship with her partner? To be honest, Sonu (Kartik Aaryan), was being quite immature for expecting his friend to never grow up and move onto the next stage of his life. Talk about being a codependent friend!
This makes me wonder why we love to hate women so much? And it’s proof that women are judged much harsher than men for what seems like, simply existing.