'Neerja' Actor Sonam Kapoor Talks Feminism With BuzzFeed India

Indian actor Sonam Kapoor poses for Harper's Bazaar India March 2016, styled in  Fendi, Michael Kors,  Salvatore Ferragamo, & Aurelle by Leshna Shah, styled  by Edward Lalrempuia.  Photographer Suresh Natarajan captures the fierce, femme fatale feminist, who recently gave an unusually candid interview to Rega Jha, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed India. Beauty by Namrata Soni.

Kapoor's new movie 'Neerja' just became Bollywood's highest-grossing 'heroine-centric' film. Kapoor plays chief purser Neerja Bhanot, who became an international hero after terrorists hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 on Sept. 5, 1986.

“I’m a feminist and I’m not embarrassed to say it at all,” Kapoor laughed at an event earlier this month. “I’ve been saying it since I was 21-years-old, since I joined this industry.”

She attributes her own feminism to her father, actor Anil Kapoor who" treated me like a son". I couldn't help thinking about Malala and the extraordinary relationship she has with her father. 

From her debut in 2007, Kapoor was already expressing a desire for roles that value "substance" over "skin". Even then, she was encouraging girls to read books and get a complete education.

In a 2010 interview, Kapoor professed her love for Jane Austen. “All her protagonists are independent, self respecting women! They are intelligent, read a lot and have a definite sense of self-entitlement,” she said. “I am quite a feminist so I like hers and Sylvia Plath’s writings a lot.”

In a 2013 interview, she advocated awards for women: “We need to encourage them for they have done so much in the field of literature, the performing arts, environmental activism, science and innovation, social impact and entrepreneurship.”

Sonam Kapoor's feminism is so strong that she identifies as a "complete feminist" and is unafraid of tackling Bollywood's wage gap. “If you think you deserve something, fight for it,” she said. “Don’t work for those people who you think are not paying you enough.”

I found this passage from Rega Jha's interview to be so spot on because of the relentless arguments around feminism that Hillary Clinton supporters are experiencing.

I know from my own experiences on Twitter that when you so much as mention women’s rights and empowerment, hordes of strangers come out of the woodwork to invalidate you with slews of irrelevant questions built upon such false notions: If you’re so feminist, why are you wearing lipstick? If you’re so feminist, why do you wax your legs? If you’re so feminist, why do you like pink? Why do you like men? Why do you wear heels? Why do you watch rom-coms? Why do you bake? Why do you give blowjobs? Why do you read Vogue?

And, unlike Parineeti Chopra, I don’t even have 6 and a half million followers.

They’re all asking: If you’re so feminist, how come you’re doing all that girly shit, bro?

If you’re so feminist, how come you’re not matching my expectations of what feminism looks like?

It's easy to focus on the challenges ahead for Indian women. It was one of those stories that was destined for this blog post tonight. It gives me great please to share such an empowering woman and new movie playing in the US, because that bad news will keep for another day. ~ Anne