Actor Dia Mirza feels that it is high time that stereotypes around female actors were banished. Speaking with IANS in an email interview, Dia said that an effort to change antiquated ideas was needed, even if stereotypical ideas of what “works” in the film industry are hard to escape.
Dia said, “With films being a visual medium with huge money riding on the outcome, what becomes impossible to escape are the prescribed ideas of what ‘works’ for directors/producers or the medium at large. I think it is most embarrassing that as an industry we are so obsessed with making our women fit into a prototype.”
Mirza said that women need to stand up and defy these perceptions. If actresses continue to allow themselves to be shaped by prescribed notions of beauty and glamour, there would not be any real change, she said.
“Having said that, I also think, it is the women who stand up for themselves and defy this diktat who will eventually help change this attitude. The audiences and the fashion/film industry will also then have to redefine their concept of ‘perfection’. But we are a long way off from getting there,” she added.
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Earlier in August, she had spoken of feeling dissatisfied as an actor because of a lack of good scripts, but satisfied as a producer because it gave her an opportunity to do something about it. She told Hindustan Times, “I am grateful that instead of moping about the lack of good opportunities to be in good films, I create opportunities by making the films I believe in.” Dia Mirza has a production house, Born Free Entertainment, through which she financed films like Love, Breakups, Zindagi and Bobby Jasoos.