Veteran Bollywood actress Zeenat Aman, who redefined the portrayal of women in Hindi cinema with her glamour and westernised fashion during the 1970s and 1980s, has revealed that she never truly considered herself beautiful, despite widespread adulation and being labelled a sex symbol.
Zeenat shared her candid reflections in a heartfelt post on Instagram, alongside a picture from her younger days.
“Sometimes I see an old picture of myself and think, ‘you weren’t a bad looking girl, Ms. Aman!’” she wrote. “Now if I happen to say these words out loud, I am usually met with an annoyed groan and a dramatic roll of the eyes from whichever of the three millennials whose company I keep happen to be around.”
While she never saw herself as beautiful, Zeenat acknowledged that others did.
“It’s true though, I never found myself to be beautiful, but I did learn to accept that other people did. I recently heard the term ‘pretty privilege’, and goodness did I make use of mine! The world can be a cold place, and I learnt early in life to leverage every advantage I have to survive it.”
Reflecting on her illustrious journey, she admitted it might seem paradoxical. “After all, I won a beauty pageant, was cast as a leading lady by the country’s most venerated directors, and was widely hailed as a ‘sex symbol’. So I can’t quite say why I was unable to fully embrace my physicality.”
She mused that perhaps she became more focused on performing beauty than feeling it. “Perhaps such public emphasis on one’s looks depleted one’s emotional self-worth. Or maybe I feared becoming arrogant, and felt it far too vain and indulgent to consider myself beautiful. Most likely it’s a combination of all these things and then some.”
Zeenat stressed that her standards for beauty are not impossibly high. “I see beautiful people around me all the time. Yet sure enough, these people don’t think they’re beautiful either. Every compliment is met with a redirection to some perceived physical flaw. I’m quite sure you do it too!”
She concluded that real beauty lies in self-acceptance.
“So, if you want to truly feel beautiful — step out of your mind, and look at yourself from the perspective of someone who loves you. Hopefully then you will see your own light and realise that no cream, collagen or facelift can compete with the lens of love and acceptance,” she wrote.
