Kajol Says She Was Always Confident In Her Skin, Yet Had A Hard Time Considering Herself ‘Beautiful’ For Several Years. Yup, Beauty Stereotypes Are To Be Blamed
If there’s one actress in Bollywood who I find incredibly real and relatable is Kajol. Not because she comes across as this truly transparent and candid celebrity who is as natural off-screen as she appears onscreen, but also because she is fiercely and unapologetically herself. She has proved time and again that she is not the one to conform to the stereotypical beauty ideals be it her dusky skin, voluminous curly hair or her iconic unibrows. She has proudly flaunted her unconventional beauty features like it’s nobody’s business (it anyway isn’t, actually), even when she was just a teenage starting out in the industry. You would think an actress like her who appeared so confident and exuded major self-love vibes wouldn’t have struggled with insecurities and inhibitions about her beauty like us sappy kids, right? Turns out the society’s expectations can make even the finest of women doubt herself.
The Tribhanga star recently revealed in an interview with Netflix how she associated every adjective from attractive, cool and sexy to herself but couldn’t come to call herself ‘beautiful’ for the longest time, partially because of people’s opinions and the typical beauty norms for a leading lady of Bollywood. She said, “I was very confident in my skin growing up. There were many adjectives I applied to myself: attractive, smart, cool, sexy even. But I didn’t consider myself beautiful. A lot of it had to do with what everybody was spouting at that time. It took me a long time to arrive at ‘beautiful’.”
Also Read: Kajol Says “We’re Regressing. People In The 50s And 60s Were Not Judged So Much.” She’s So Right!
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I have been idolising Kajol all my life for refusing to succumb to societal expectations of beauty though and making her unibrows her most striking feature that have come to be known as her signature. Guess the credit goes to her grandmother. She said, “The idea of seeing the beauty in imperfection is something my grandmother tried to instil in me at a very young age. She was considered one of the great beauties of her time, but she always told me, ‘It’s my slight cockeye that makes me beautiful!’ Yet, it was many years before I could look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘You are beautiful!’”
She is someone I could have never guessed to be insecure but turns out celebrities get insecure too. The important thing is that Kajol fought her demons and is over her self-consciousness now. She said, “Today, it’s an entirely different thing. I don’t mean to sound conceited but I often catch myself in the mirror or in a selfie and I’m like, ‘Wow… I’m stunning!’ She has emerged more confident than ever and hopes all women can hype themselves up like her while looking in the mirror. “I hope women everywhere are having similar conversations with themselves,” she added. Well, I agree. Sometimes, channelling your inner Poo in front of the mirror does help!
