Bollywood Actress Kajol Revealed That It Took Many Years To Consider Herself As 'Beautiful'

Bollywood ace actress Kajol spoke to Netflix and opened up on how it took many years to consider herself as 'Beautiful'… We all know about her ace acting skills. But her dusky skin and the uni-brow look was not at all the beauty ideals of the early 90s. Thus, Kajol spoke on how she faced challenges in the industry…

The cover page of Netflix shows Kajol in a modish look… It has the tagline, "There's no manual for perfection you know?". This post reads, "It's been more than two decades since Kajol has been challenging the status quo.

Over the past 29 years, she's given a very ladylike middle finger to popular opinion and built a life and career entirely on her own terms. Like she candidly says, "That's half the reason why I don't do 90% of the films that are offered to me. If I'm not having fun or being creatively challenged, what's the point? More importantly, I don't want to carry the burden of doing all the work by myself. I want to work with people who will coax something amazing out of me as well."

Her new Netflix release Tribhanga is just the latest passion project for the formidable actor, a celebration of strong and unapologetic female characters who are portrayed in a very different light than one is used to viewing women in Bollywood films. "You are viewing women exactly as they should be - unapologetically and without judgement. You're seeing a story where there is no hero and no villain. They are just human beings who've made some choices – maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong – but there's no manual for perfection, you know?"

But sometimes, a strong beginning is all it takes. "I loved Anu from day one because she is a super passionate character; you can literally feel the intensity pouring out of her. She's all in, all of the time. I'm a lot like her!" she says passionately.

"I also love the fact that Tribhanga is about mother-daughter relationships. I have a fantastic relationship with my mom even though we're both so opinionated and outspoken. I may have rebelled against the world, but I never went through a phase of rebellion with her. Even today, there's no one who can petrify me more! Though I have a very different relationship with my mom compared to the one Anu and Nayan share in the film, I could very easily see how their relationship went wrong. Both are such headstrong characters. I could understand where Anu was coming from. I just got her."

Kajol looks awesome and pretty wearing black sleeveless gown… "While some actors get typecast, others are capable of representing multitudes. When Kajol first burst onto the scene as a 17-year-old in 1992, Indian women saw so much of themselves in her refreshingly atypical appearance for a leading lady. Back then, beauty norms of being tall, thin, and fair were at their peak in the film industry. Yet here she was: a spirited teenager who blatantly broke the "rules" of beauty with her dusky skin and unibrow, which went on to become iconic. She commanded such a striking presence on the big screen with her pure talent paving the road to stardom.

While Kajol didn't particularly care about how she looked or how others perceived her, it was many years before she finally considered herself beautiful. "The idea of seeing the beauty in imperfection is something my grandmother tried to instil in me at a very young age. She was considered one of the great beauties of her time, but she always told me, 'It's my slight cockeye that makes me beautiful!' Yet, it was many years before I could look at myself in the mirror and go, 'You are beautiful!'. Don't get me wrong - I was very confident in my skin growing up. There were many adjectives I applied to myself: attractive, smart, cool, sexy even. But I didn't consider myself beautiful. A lot of it had to do with what everybody was spouting at that time. It took me a long time to arrive at 'beautiful'. Today, it's an entirely different thing. I don't mean to sound conceited but I often catch myself in the mirror or in a selfie and I'm like, 'Wow… I'm stunning! I hope women everywhere are having similar conversations with themselves."

Along with this beautiful look of Kajol, Netflix also made us know about her views being trendsetter in the industry… "In many ways, Kajol is the OG trendsetter in the industry: a non-conformist who is always marching to the beat of her own drum. Be it her famous disregard for fashion, her film choices, or even her decision to get married at the peak of her career - something that was unheard of at the time and would finish the careers of many actresses.

And when she made a comeback after having children, she picked up exactly where she left off - as the leading lady. If it wasn't for her eyebrow-raising decisions, perhaps actresses like Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and others would have had to fight harder to have solid careers after marriage and babies. It's not entirely incorrect to say that she paved the way for many of them and rewrote many of the rules along the way.

"Honestly, I don't know about that!" she laughs. "There were many actresses who came before me - like Sadhana and Sharmila Tagore - who made unconventional decisions in their time. It's just that there wasn't so much mainstream media attention or social media amplification back then. Yes, I did have a huge disregard for popular opinion and did exactly what I wanted, but I don't think I was so pathbreaking. I just had a lot of clarity in my life thanks to my mom. She pushed me to make my own decisions, saying, 'I'm not going to think for you, and nobody else should either. You have to think for yourself and decide what you want or don't want. You want to do a film, do it. You want to get married, do it.' The consequences of my decisions were mine and mine alone, so the decisions had to be my own too. I've been quite lucky that way. Nobody shoved anything down my throat and even if people thought differently, I don't think anybody had the guts to really come out and say that to me. I wouldn't have listened anyway!"