Alia Bhatt’s elder sister Shaheen recently opened up facing insults for being overweight and dark in the past. Speaking to journalist Rajeev Masand, Shaheen said that even the mention of that incident, when a photographer had asked her leave the picture because she was dark and overweight, made her uncomfortable.
Masand reminded her how once when she and Alia had gone to a photoshoot with their elder sister Pooja Bhatt when the photographer reportedly asked her to leave the picture she was dark and overweight. Masand continued, “Because the two of them (Alia and Pooja) looked similar, they were fair, cute and you were dark having spent too much time in the sun and you were a little overweight. And you said that till date, looking at those pictures cripples you emotionally.”
A visibly disturbed Shaheen said, “It is making me uncomfortable right now, the fact that you are talking about it, is making me uncomfortable. I think women in general suffer from a lot of body image and lot of things we are told by media, by ourselves, it is a problem in general. Self-worth is definitely… shame is definitely a cause for depression, it can be for any reason.”
She went on to add, “Shame is central. I wish people can understand that shame is central to any feeling of depression and any feeling of sadness and it stops you from being vulnerable. You constantly fear that if you will show yourself as you are, you will be rejected by society.”
Shaheen said that the said incident indeed affected her as she ‘was at an age where the seeds of that were being sown in me.’ “I was just trying to figure out who I was and obviously when something like this happens to you at such an unsure and uncertain time in your life, it sort of reinforces that and sets in stone in a way,” she said.
Shaheen is Mahesh Bhatt’s daughter from his wife Soni Razdan and is elder to Alia by four years.