As Taapsee Pannu slammed bodyshamers on Twitter, she joined a league of actresses who have been unafraid to take on trolls and detractors — both online and offline. This week also saw Kangana Ranaut take on the film industry with a sketch called The Bollywood Diva Song. These instances may make headlines for different reasons, but the message is loud and quite clear — A Bollywood actress isn’t going to take bad behaviour lying low.
A celebrity known for her cutting rebuttals is choreographer and filmmaker Farah Khan, who takes on trolls with much aplomb. “Earlier when I was new to Twitter, it used to get to me. But now it’s not the same. I give it back,” she explains adding, “I block them for sure. But sometimes I abuse before blocking them. I send them a direct message, and correct their spellings and grammar. This is because most of them don’t know how to write, but have many abuses to pass.”
Anushka Sharma has a more pragmatic take on trolls. “By now I’m mature enough to understand you shouldn’t take this too seriously. Trolls are just a bunch of people who are highly frustrated in their own lives. I don’t like the fact that people find it so easy to hate one another. So much that people are constantly fuming and find it easy to ridicule and break somebody’s spirit. It’s very sad. You can call me an idealist, or you can call me a dreamer, but that’s exactly how I feel.”
While some actresses choose to turn a blind eye towards the hate as a way to deal with it, film analyst Omar Qureshi thinks that the leading ladies today are not to be messed with. “I think some of our actresses have more b***s than some of our politically correct heroes,” he laughs. “And traditionally, they’ve always been bolder and more beautiful than most. It used to be via print headlines and TV screens earlier but now they have their own platforms to hit back, and tell the trolls off.”
