Zeenat Aman’s Surprising Take on Beauty: "I Never Saw Myself as Beautiful"
Mumbai’s iconic Bollywood star Zeenat Aman has always turned heads with her bold style and glamorous roles in the 1970s and 1980s. But in a candid Instagram post, the veteran actress revealed a secret: she never really considered herself beautiful. Sharing a throwback photo from her younger days, Zeenat opened up about self-image, pretty privilege, and why true beauty starts from within.
In her caption, Zeenat shared a light-hearted moment: "Sometimes I see an old picture of myself and think, ‘You weren’t a bad looking girl, Ms. Aman!’ But if I say this out loud, I get annoyed groans and eye rolls from the millennials around me." Despite her fame as a sex symbol in Hindi cinema, she admitted she struggled to embrace her looks. "I never found myself to be beautiful, but I did learn to accept that other people did," she wrote.
Zeenat didn’t shy away from how she used her appearance to her advantage. "I recently heard the term ‘pretty privilege’, and goodness did I make use of mine! The world can be a cold place, and I learnt early in life to leverage every advantage I have to survive it." She won beauty pageants, starred in films by top directors, and became a household name—yet she calls it "hideously self-indulgent" to dwell on it. So why the disconnect? "Perhaps I got wrapped up in the performance of beauty rather than the feeling. Or maybe the public focus on my looks drained my emotional self-worth. Or I feared becoming arrogant. It’s probably a mix of all that."
The Bollywood legend isn’t alone in this, she points out. "It’s really not that I have some exacting beauty standard. I see beautiful people around me all the time, yet they don’t think they’re beautiful either. Every compliment leads to pointing out a flaw—I’m sure you do it too!" Her key message? Physical beauty means little without self-acceptance. "Which brings me back to the thought that physical beauty, no matter how widely acknowledged, is meaningless without self-validation."
Zeenat wrapped up with inspiring advice for anyone battling self-doubt: "So, if you want to truly feel beautiful, step out of your mind and look at yourself from the perspective of someone who loves you. Hopefully then you will see your own light and realise that no cream, collagen, or facelift can compete with the lens of love and acceptance."
Fans have loved this raw glimpse into Zeenat Aman’s thoughts on beauty standards, self-love, and her trailblazing career in Indian cinema. It’s a reminder that even legends like her grapple with inner confidence.
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