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Now showing: The millennial shero
Updated On: 27 August, 2023 10:29 AM IST | Mumbai | Aastha Atray Banan
Film critic Maithili Rao’s book sheds light on how, why and when the millennial woman started making her agency heard and felt in Bollywood
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Deepika Padukone in a still from Gehraiyaan (2022)
"It was while spending a few summers in the US that I started reading a lot about the millennial woman, but she was mostly defined in Western terms. But it’s all happening here as well, even though independent, working women are a very small part of the demographic, they are very influential in advertising and pop culture. So this idea of writing about her in movies was always there,” says film critic and author Maithili Rao, whose idea has coalesced into her new book, The Millennial Woman in Bollywood: A New ‘Brand’.
Rao, who also wrote Smita Patil: A Brief Incandescence, in 2015, felt that everything was changing, which needed to be documented. “In the 90s, when the Western influence was trending [as the economy opened up and western soap operas permeated our lives through cable TV],” she says, “there was universal worry about whether we were losing our culture. Movies such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge [1995] and Hum Aapke Hain Koun! [1994] reaffirmed patriarchy. That made me think even more.”
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