'I think age shaming has always been a problem,' shares Shruti Haasan

Actress-singer Shruti Haasan has a lot to look forward to in 2022. The Free Press Journal caught up with her for an exclusive chat recently. Excerpts:

Body shaming was common, but now age shaming too is a nuisance, especially on social media. Your comment?

I think age shaming has always been a problem. It’s always been so open. If you look at Hollywood, it was even spoken about 15 years ago. It’s a human thing to age, and it’s their mentality and a common thing to talk about. But my heroes are women like Meryl Streep, Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. You can’t put a tough woman as you say so. Age is not in my universe. I think it shouldn’t exist in anyone’s universe. You do what you want to do on your timeline.

Will you hold the reins of direction?

I think it’s a very huge responsibility. I would love to, but it’s not something that you can just easily do. And I know what it means to work with an underqualified director. It’s very difficult. I wouldn’t like to put somebody to that. It’s a beautiful profession I would love to do, but I am not ready to do it now. It needs tremendous focus. When I can balance it, I will do it.

Celebrities from the field of glitz and glamour have to be prim and proper whenever they make a public appearance. Do you feel the pressure?

I can’t say I am prim and proper because I never make an effort. I like to dress up and present myself the way I feel comfortable. There is no pressure at all. I like to have my own alternative sense of fashion and clothing. It’s something I enjoy. I don’t fit the mainstream in most ways and not in fashion also, so I am not trying to be prim and proper. But I am trying to enjoy fashion like every woman likes to enjoy it.

Actors usually don’t like to repeat dresses. Your take?

No, I repeat dresses. I very much believe in sustainable fashion. The future of fashion and then reusing and recycling, up-cycling clothing is very important. We need to get that mentality out of our heads about not reusing clothing. Recently, on my birthday, I was talking to different people about the topics that I care about, and we also spoke about fashion. I spoke about the wastage of water that occurs while manufacturing clothing. There is loads of fabric waste in the world. It is important to move in the direction of valuing clothing.

Go on...

I actually had arranged a sale of all my clothes that I wasn’t using around Christmas. These clothes were very special to me, and I have memories of each one. To resell them and have the benefit go to charity, we can do so many things this way as well. All of us have our cupboards full of clothes that we don’t use, so the best way is to hand them out to the next generation or reuse them. People make beautiful new pieces of clothing from reused and recycled old pieces of clothing.

Do you have to don a separate airport look?

I am just wearing black all the time. Therefore it’s not so difficult for me.