Actress Vidya Balan has said that she finds balancing work and home an overrated and unfair concept, has no problems being associated with ‘women-centric’ films, and thinks the category will disappear the day Bollywood starts giving equal importance to male and female leads.
Balan told The Hindustan Times, “I don’t juggle. I’m no longer trying to be superwoman. I am a woman who when I’m working, I’m working, when I’m home, I’m home, when I’m chilling, I’m chilling. Sometimes, when I don’t feel like doing anything, I don’t do anything. So, I think this balancing is really overrated because women are constantly asked to balance home and work and it’s unfair,” she added.
Vidya also said that while women are still surrounded by unrealistic expectations about what they should do, things are slowly changing. “Maybe I feel guilty because I am a girl. Maybe a man wouldn’t feel the same way because you take it for granted that a man sometimes can’t make it to certain special occasions because they are working. We (women) still feel that we should work and be there (for occasions too). But I think these unrealistic expectations are slowly shedding,” she added.
Vidya Balan also said she had no problem being associated with women-centric films. She said, “No, because I’m enjoying the kind of work I am doing. People ask me ‘Why call it women-centric films, why can’t you just call it film?’ I say ‘because all these years and decades you’ve had men at the centre of the plot’.”
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In fact, according to her the ‘women-centric’ tag will cease to exist the day Bollywood starts making films that give equal weight to female as well as male leads. “Someday, when there are equal number of films of men and women at the centre of the plot, then people will stop saying ‘women-centric films’. So far it isn’t a norm, which is why they say that and, therefore, people ask me, ‘Oh, you are doing a women-centric film’,” she said.
Vidya Balan’s Kahaani 2 released recently and has garnered the actress much critical acclaim for her performance.