ARTICLE
Sorry to break it to you,
Priyanka Chopra, but you're a
feminist
w
hile walking along a subway stop in New York,
I saw something rare: The face of an Indian actress on a billboard. It was an advertisement for
Quantico, a drama which premieres in the US on Sept.
27 on ABC. The TV series has been making news in the
Indian press for several months now exactly because of
that face I saw: it features Priyanka Chopra as the lead
character, making her the first Bollywood actor to headline an American show. Not only is it unprecedented that
an Indian actress is the face of a major American TV series, 33-year-old Chopra is also breaking several stereotypes with her role. She plays Alex Parrish, a young FBI
recruit who
is half Indian
and
half
Caucasian.
In
the teasers,
her character
seems
modern, vivacious and
thankfully
devoid
of
any ethnic
stereotypes
— think Aputype accent.
But the initial
desi
pride
I felt when
seeing the
billboard diminished
significantly
after I read this interview by Chopra in Refinery 29, a
lifestyle website. Asked by the interviewer if the show
is feminist, the Bollywood star replied:With these statements, Chopra has joined the ranks of educated, urban
Indians who shun the word “feminism” like the plague.
Many of them appear to believe that feminists are women who hate men and sex and go around burning bras
whenever they are angry. Anyone who has looked up
the word in a dictionary would know how horribly inaccurate this assumption is. For the record, this is how Merriam Webster defines feminism: The belief that men and
women should have equal rights and opportunities. Or, in
other words, the movement is about “empowerment” and
social “progress.” It is about “strong” women and equal
opportunities. Basically, everything that Chopra says
Quantico is about, while balking at the word feminism. I
expected Chopra to know better. Apart from being one of
the most successful contemporary Bollywood star, she is
also a champion of United Nations Girl Up, a campaign
whose mission is to promote health, education, safety
and leadership of girls in developing nations. She is also
a very vocal critic of the huge gap between what male
and female actors earn in Bollywood. And, yet, Chopra
chooses to distance herself from a movement that has,
for decades,
fought those
very battles.
In the West,
several prominent female
actors have
done their bit
recently
to
promote feminism. Harry
Potter‘s star
Emma Watson famously
said in her
speech
at
the UN last
year:
“The
more I have
spoken about
feminism, the
more I have
realised that
fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating,” Watson said. “If there is one
thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop. For the
record, feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and
women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is
the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.”Perhaps Chopra, who not only has her
heart in the right place, but also millions of young fans,
should take a cue from her Hollywood peers as she
makes her TV debut in the US, and overcome her allergy for the f-word.
17 | BOOM