From Naina To Anjali: Indian Female Characters That Scream 'Male Gaze' Writing

Cinema has always shaped how we understand gender, love, ambition, and power. The problem begins when female characters are not written as people but as concepts. Concepts of purity, sacrifice, correction, reward, or emotional labour. These women are not allowed interiority unless it serves male growth. Below are ten female characters from Indian cinema who feel painfully artificial, not because they lack strength, but because they are written through a narrow and deeply male lens.

1. Naina Talwar (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)

Naina’s transformation follows one of the most exhausted formulas in mainstream cinema. Glasses off, confidence on, now worthy of love. Her arc is not about growth but about aesthetic correction. She begins as a shy, studious medical student, coded as boring and undesirable. The moment she replaces her glasses with contact lenses, she becomes visible.

Her ambition is acknowledged but never explored. Bunny’s dreams of travel and career dominate the film, while Naina’s medical journey is reduced to a passing reference to a clinic. She exists to validate Bunny’s emotional evolution from man child to marriage-ready hero. She is strong only when her strength does not inconvenience him. In the end, marriage is her reward. Her career quietly disappears.

2. Shanaya Singhania (Student of the Year)

Shanaya is presented as the modern girl. Stylish, confident, wealthy, and talented. Yet her independence is conditional. She is allowed agency only until romance enters the story. Once that happens, her arc becomes about emotional correction and humility.

Written by men who think feminism means sass and short dresses, Shanaya’s complexity is surface level. Her passion for music and performance never competes with the male narrative. Her growth revolves around heartbreak rather than selfhood. She looks progressive, but her story still bends toward romantic validation.

3. Hasini (Santhosh Subramaniam)

Hasini is the definitive Loosu Ponnu. Hyperactive, childish, irrational, and endlessly cute. Her lack of logic is framed as charm. Her personality is not quirky, it is infantilised.

She constantly needs saving, emotional management, and protection from the male lead. Even harassment is reframed as harmless teasing. She has no emotional depth, no accountability, and no inner conflict. The audience is asked to love her because she is harmless and non-threatening.

4. Kundavi (Sillunu Oru Kaadhal)

Kundavi embodies the traditional virtuous wife. Her strength lies in endurance. While the film shows her growth, it frames her value around acceptance and sacrifice.

Her desires are secondary to fate, marriage, and emotional maturity defined by suffering. She is praised not for resistance or autonomy, but for how gracefully she absorbs pain. Her evolution is about adapting to loss, not choosing differently.

5. Bindu (Thanmathra)

Bindu exists to absorb emotional fallout. She is endlessly patient, endlessly understanding, and endlessly silent. Her exhaustion is aestheticised.

She never cracks, screams, or resents. That would make her inconvenient. Her inner life remains off screen. Strength is equated with silence, and resilience with self erasure. She is strong because she never complains.

6. Meera (Kabir Singh)

Meera is not passive, she is erased. She has no anger, no voice, and no boundaries. Abuse is framed as tragic romance.

Possession is mistaken for protection. Her silence is romanticised as purity. Her acceptance of violence is treated as devotion. She is not written as someone who chooses. She is written as someone who forgives everything.

7. Anjali Sharma (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai)

Anjali is a tomboy until femininity becomes a requirement for love. Her friendship with Rahul is treated as a phase she must outgrow.

Once she realises her feelings, she is punished with abandonment. When she returns, she does so transformed. Saris replace tracksuits. Motherhood and marriage regulate her desire. The message is clear. Women can be friends, but only until romance demands correction.

8. Tina Malhotra (Kuch Kuch Hota Hai)

Tina is femininity personified. Elegant, desirable, and self sacrificing. Even in death, her role is to manage emotional closure for others.

Her final act is matchmaking her husband with another woman. Her identity dissolves into moral goodness. She exists to validate Rahul’s choices and Anjali’s destiny. Her death serves narrative convenience.

9. Nandini (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam)

Nandini’s story is framed as epic heartbreak, but her agency is repeatedly overridden. Her desires are reshaped to suit moral optics and male sacrifice narratives.

Her grief is internalised and aestheticised. While the men move, scream, and decide, she freezes. Even her final choice feels less like autonomy and more like emotional exhaustion.

10. Lara (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)

Lara exists as contrast. She is the pretty, dim girl with the perfect body and odd accent. She has no inner life.

She is objectified for humour and desire. Her presence reinforces the idea that women are either respectable or decorative. She is not written to be understood, only to be looked at.

These characters are not badly acted. They are badly imagined. They reflect a pattern where women exist to inspire growth, absorb pain, validate masculinity, or symbolise morality. Their ambitions fade. Their anger is silenced. Their stories end where men’s begin.

Many of us still rewatch these films with nostalgia. That does not mean we stop questioning them. Loving cinema also means holding it accountable. Girls deserve to see themselves as whole, ambitious, contradictory human beings, not as rewards or waiting rooms for male transformation.

Views expressed by the author are their own.