Feminist in Me !

The feminist in me screams out loud when I see the fate of heroine in Kollywood. Well please don’t imagine a ‘Malaysia vasudevan’ voice singing ‘Oh! Oru thendral’ in the background (which is what KV sings when I start a topic like this) .

A heroine in kollywood is defined as a very pretty girl able to dance. No prerequisite in regards to acting talent or knowing tamil. Someone with all or most of the talents are very rare to find, when someone like that manage to be successful, they are the celebrities with fans building even temple for them. While they are adored to such an extent, before you know they are completely forgotten when a new one appears. The career span of a heroine is only a few years as against few decades of a Kollywood Hero.

The requirement for a hero in Kollywood is very different. He should be a tamilian, or atleast know tamil as dubbing for hero is big no no. He need not have good looks or be able to dance. He can have really bad dress sense, horrible hair style ( or no hair) , can be just too fat to dance or too old to act. The only talent could be his ability to tame a cow or buffalo and sing to them. Nothing matters.

A heroine’s career comes to a perfect fullstop when she gets married, no questions asked after she has children, but the hero continues to be in the field as a hero as long as he ‘can’.

Hero always has a heroine aged between 16 and 26, very pretty (ofcourse!) from any part of India. He can be in the field for atleast 20 years. Even when he has kids and grandkids he can still act as Hero fighting a zillion enemies, with young heroines dancing around him. His son entering into cinema makes no difference to his career. Both father and son can act with the same heroine and infact some of these heroes have actually acted with both the mother and daughter.

When the heroine is married and then return to the industry after couple of years, they end up acting as the sister (usually elder), sister in law or even mother or mother in law.

For some reason being pretty is the absolute requirement for heroines only in the industry, atleast that is understandable. Hubi says it is only fair Ambica, Banupriya or even Kushbhu could not come back as heroines because they had crossed the stage of being a heroine and I agree but my question is if a pretty heroine comes back or rather if the heroine comes back as pretty as she was, why is it so difficult to accept her.

Dear KV for argument sake said it is an ethical issue of seeing a married woman or a mother as heroine as heroines are always portrayed as a dream girl. But if we can accept Britney spears and Angelina Jolie, why is it so hard for Indian women. Infact I think Bollywood is a tiny bit better atleast in terms of the heros accepting to act with their heroines like kajol and Juhi. Some sensible heros, rather only sensible hero Amitabh chooses roles to suit his age, and outperforms each of his previous movie. Well that’s just him.


It was ridiculous having Nadhiya as Sunder C ‘s Mom in law, for goodness sake sunder would be older than nadiya. Surya and Simran acting as pair and now simran has done surya’s mom in vaaranam aayiram. Thank god the father role was also done by surya.
I am not quite sure how to end this topic, as I am unable to get answers to all the questions that raise in my mind. Is it the heros or their producers or the audience, who decides this fate of the heroines ? Is it just another dimension in a male chauvinistic society ?

What is weird is heroines like saroja devi and savithiri and few others acted after marriage and kids, some too obese to be a heroines. They were accepted and this was in the baby boomers generation. Whatever went wrong in the Gen Xs , hopefully the so called modern Gen Ys change this trend ! ( Well I lost the status of being a Gen Y by 51 days )