Mumbai: Actress Vidya Balan said she disagreed with modern feminism which restricts women to a stereotypical image.

Vidya Balan was the chief guest at the launch event of Mysuru-based film critic and author Maithili Rao’s book “The Millennial Woman in Bollywood: A New ‘Brand’?” on Friday night at ‘Title Waves’, a book shop at Bandra in Mumbai.

In the book, brought out by Oxford University Press, Maithili Rao explores the shift in women’s portrayal from victimised objects to strong, well-rounded heroines who can now be protagonists. Rao explains how contemporary cinema recognised this change and quietly infused power into its heroines while retaining the formulaic stories that audiences grew to love.

Speaking at the event, Vidya Balan said, “Why can’t a strong woman, a feminist, have a partner, also wish to enjoy traditional things and also wish to take a step back? Why is the modern woman being used as a typical example of what every woman must be? Why is the modern woman being stereotyped? Why empowerment and wanting to live as you please need to be       so exclusive.”

She cited the example of her 2021 film ‘Sherni’ and said her character of Vidya Vincent took on the men without doing any ‘chest-thumping’. “That’s why I loved ‘Sherni’ so much. She took on these men, but in such a subdued manner, not needing to indulge in any chest-thumping. Why do we need to pigeonhole women in a certain way we wish to see them as empowered? Why can’t women just be the way they wish rather than how we wish to see them in a modern feminist outlook?” the 44-year-old actor asked.

In the Amit Masurkar-directed drama ‘Sherni,’ Balan is featured as an upright Forest Officer who is tasked to resolve the man-animal conflict.

“For (me) feminism is very different, knowing (my) rights and living life on (my) terms, all this constitutes who (I am); but for a woman in a village who has lived in ‘purdah’ or ‘ghunghat’ all her life, the first time she lifts the ‘ghunghat’ and walks, that is empowerment, in that context she’s being a feminist.” “Don’t you think we are going through a time when we are having a very myopic view on this,” the actress asked.

During the question-and-answer session, Vidya was asked if an end to the conversation around women empowerment would signal that equality has been achieved by society. The actor said that it will ‘take a very long time’.

Maithili Rao is a freelance film critic and author of ‘Smita Patil: A Brief Incandescence’ which has been translated into Marathi. The anthology on motherhood, ‘The Oldest Love Story,’ co-edited with Rinki Bhattacharya was released in Bombay  by Shabana Azmi.

She currently writes a column ‘The Current Cinema for Man’s World’ and has written for major national and international publications. Maithili Rao is a member of the Mysuru Book Clubs-2015 and was a part of Mysuru Literature Festival-2022.