Actress Zareen Khan recently opened up about being body-shamed after she entered the Hindi film industry.
The B-town diva revealed that prior to her setting foot in the showbiz world, she weighed more than 100 kg but was never called names. However, she was subjected to body shaming once she entered films and was even trolled brutally for sharing a picture of herself with stretch marks on her stomach.
Talking about it in an interview with a leading daily, Zareen recalled that she weighed more than 100 kg during her school and college days. However, no one dared to call her names, let alone bully.
"The fact is, that I weighed more than 100kg when I was in school and college. But no one dared say anything to me. Whenever I heard that someone is fat and is being bullied, I used to think how can that be? 'Itna bada shareer hai, do laga ke do (With the huge body, just give it back to them'). I have always been like this so I was never bullied. I only faced body-shaming when I entered the film industry. I could not understand. I thought 'I did not face this when I was more than 100kg, and now that I am half the weight, they call me fat!'"
She added, "It was weird, but did not affect me. I am an actor, judge me on my acting abilities, not my weight, colour, or height. But there are people in the film industry who go all out to say that body-shaming should not be done. However, when they make a film, they only want zero-sized girls for their movie. There is a lot of show-offs and double standard in our industry."
For the unversed, in 2019, Zareen was brutally fat-shamed and mocked as 'Fat'-rina' after she posted a photograph showing stretch marks on her stomach.
Zareen had then shared a note for the trolls after reading their nasty comments, which read, "For people who are very curious to know about what's wrong with my stomach, this is the natural stomach of a person who's lost more than 50 Kg of weight. This is how it looks when it is not photoshopped or surgically corrected. I've always been someone who believes in being real and embraced my imperfections with pride rather than covering it up."
Zareen recently also spoke about her comparisons with actress Katrina Kaif.
In an exclusive chat with Navbharat Times, Zareen had said, "People come in the industry to create an identity for themselves and not to be someone else's lookalike or shadow. I have struggled to make a place for myself in Bollywood for 11 years, but till date, people tag me as Katrina's lookalike. No filmmaker wants to work with a lookalike or duplicate."
Stating that it wasn't just Katrina whom she was likened with, but that she called a duplicate of a few other heroines as well, Zareen said, "I think I have a universal face. I apparently look like a lot of people. Some call me Pooja Bhatt's resemblance, some say Preity Zinta, some even state I am Sunny Leone's lookalike. I don't understand why don't I ever look like Zareen Khan to people."
In her career spanning over a decade, Zareen films like 'Housefull 2', 'Hate Story 3', '1921' to name a few and a music video 'Pyaar Manga Hai'. She also hosted a few episodes of 'MTV Troll Police' in 2018. In 2019, Zareen made her debut in the Telugu film industry with a role in the film 'Chanakya'.
Most recently, she was seen in 'Hum Bhi Akele Tum Bhi Akele', that dropped on Disney+Hotstar.
