Unfiltered, unbothered and unapologetic are a few tags that describe Anshula Kapoor and her fearless persona. While the world is busy hiding flaws she wears her heart on her sleeve and that’s why we got into a conversation with her.
There has never been a time when I stumbled across a Kommune India video and did not fall in love with it instantly, and the one that recently caught my attention was much more than just poetry or narration. It was personal, unfiltered and simply real – it was Anshula Kapoor, speaking her heart out. People might know her as Boney Kapoor’s daughter, or Arjun Kapoor’s sister, but apart from all the glitz and glam family she belongs to, she identifies as someone who embraces flaws and celebrates womanhood. Contrary to what one would expect of someone hailing from one of the biggest Bollywood families as hers, she is anything but guarded. Instead, she ensures she uses her stature to vocalise her opinions and so she does! If not making us teary-eyed at Spoken Fests, you’ll find her telling us what’s in her bag, praising homegrown brands, taking a lead on body positivity or maybe spilling cocktail recipes on Instagram. Kapoor takes solace in the fact that the world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows, and talks about the gloomy aspects of life, especially the ones that are innate to her. On that note, if you’re lacking some inspiration lately, here we have Anshula Kapoor filling you in with the realities of life and urging you to come out unscathed on the other side.
In conversation with Anshula Kapoor on…
…the notion of beauty
“I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and asked myself what beauty means to me or how I interpret the term but now that you’ve made me ponder- beauty is so much more than just being your superficial reflection or just the outer shell of any human being or any living being. I feel beauty and kindness walk hand in hand. If I see somebody who is doing an act of kindness the first word that comes to me is ‘That’s beautiful!’. Also, there is a lot of beauty in strength! Being able to overcome challenges that life throws at you, being able to come out unscathed on the other side of being able to live through the toughest moments of your life and still be able to move forward, would also be part of my notion of what beauty is. Also, there is beauty in being compassionate, empathetic and confident, and owning who you are. Just letting go of insecurities, because I can tell you from personal experience letting go of insecurities and not overthinking them is the toughest thing to do, so if you’ve been able to do that there is something so beautiful about you”.
…her journey and understanding of PCOS
“I’ve been navigating life with PCOS since I was 14 so I feel I’ve lived more of my life at this point with PCOS than without it. It’s a complex syndrome there’s nothing that you can do that makes you feel you’ve conquered it or cured it, it’s a lifestyle issue that you have to work on every single day. My biggest learning has been that every day is going to be a different day because of my hormones and my body. And I have to give myself grace and PCOS taught me how to do that with myself. Because there are some days I’ll wake up completely bloated, and there are some days I’ll wake up and I will have so much facial hair it’s just demotivating to start your day by shaving your face the first thing in the morning. There are even more complex issues that come with your period cycle – infertility for a lot of people, the way you physically look, the bloating, weight gain, and the inability to lose weight easily. PCOS is not spoken about enough and it is sometimes just overlooked as something silly and basic but most girls have it and just my learning with it so far has been that I have to be kind and patient with myself and work harder with lifestyle changes”.
…her experience at the Spoken Fest
“Spoken Fest is such a beautiful property that Kommune has created. I am so humbled and fortunate that Tess believed that I have a story in me that is worthy of sharing at that kind of stage. But when we first saw our conversations and I realised that Spoken Fest is going to happen on mom’s birthday, for me it was a no-brainer to use the platform to celebrate my mom and to speak about her. In the decade that she passed what I realised is everyone does grieve differently, but there still is a little bit of stigma attached to the vocalisation of grief. People don’t talk about the person who’s passed away a lot of times. It’s because that affects them negatively or they relive memories that they probably don’t want to. But sometimes what happens by not talking about the person who passed away you tend to start forgetting the person and I’ve never wanted to do that. So my way of talking about mom is my way of keeping her alive. Over the years I’ve had a lot of people who also reached out to me when they’ve lost someone, especially during Covid. So, I wanted to share a personal story where I struggled with something for the longest time and this thought process was behind the reason why I wanted to share my story the way I did on the platform and the feedback that I have gotten ever since the video’s come up on YouTube is has been overwhelmingly positive. Sharing the most vulnerable part of me has helped other people feel like they aren’t alone and for me that’s the best outcome from this.”
…mental health and women’s health
I think we’ve made a lot of progress when it comes to mental health and women’s health in India but there is a significant gap that is still left to fill. I love the fact that there is now more awareness about mental health whether it’s for men or women, even postpartum mental health for example. And I feel at least in metro cities the stigma to talk about mental health has reduced maybe we have the pandemic to thank for that even women’s health issues whether it’s something like endometriosis, PCOS or postpartum depression are being spoken about a little bit more at least in our cities if nowhere else, and I think these are good steps. But I still feel like the conversation around women’s health and mental health is restricted mostly to our cities I don’t think the conversation and more than the conversation the resources and the help are being penetrated further deeper into the country whether it’s villages or smaller towns. I don’t know how much access to mental health resources, women’s health resources, and hospital professionals they have as compared to any big metro city. So I think the more we talk about it, the more we normalise it, and the lesser the stigma will remain. Also, there isn’t enough chatter about women’s health as much as we would see maybe in Western countries. So there have been strides made, but there still is a good way to go before we can perhaps be in power with other countries.
…fashion and body positivity
Oh wow! Not an expert but these are my two cents – we have made strides in fashion and beauty in the country as a whole. I feel whether it’s on social media or whether it’s when we see fashion weeks or even advertisement hoardings, ads on TV or across media there definitely is a little bit more of a wider range of body shapes and types of hair and skin tones that you now see with more of real women depicted. That’s always a positive sign. I like being able to see people on a hoarding that I can relate to whether it’s for my curls or the way my body shape is. Chatter about body positivity, what they normally call plus size or bigger bodied models on the runway and bigger bodied individuals being roped in across media for advertisement purposes is a positive sign.
But the other question here is that sometimes in fashion weeks or a large fashion campaign, we will see your quintessential woman modelling the entire capsule collection and then there will be that one larger size model or that one darker skin model who is there. Sometimes, I feel, we are still doing it just for a tick box. It’s not being done holistically, it’s being done just so that they are not called out so that they can call themselves a little bit more inclusive. So I feel like representation needs to be a lot more consistent across the campaign and many of the new brands are doing it and I love seeing it. ITRH is a brand that’s doing it and I feel like it’s in the DNA of the brand to be inclusive in all forms. But the other issue that remains and I can attest to this as a bigger-bodied individual is sometimes the brand will use a bigger body token person to showcase their collection but if you go on the website to order something they are not as size-inclusive. So, I think that needs to change because even bigger-bodied women also like to dress cute and smart.
…inclusivity and beauty standards
“I like that the conversation around fairness creams has drastically reduced or maybe in my bubble the conversation and the chatter have reduced and I think that’s a great step where we are not focusing so much on skin lightening and we are focusing on the fact that we are brown-skinned as Indians so it’s okay to be darker skinned. The other thing that I guess I’ve seen a lot of progress in the last few years but I think we still have more work to do is LGBTQ+ now representation. During fashion week we do see it being represented a lot more but I think in the 360°of things especially when it comes to a lot more beauty brands we don’t see the community being represented as much so maybe that is also a kind of inclusivity that we have to do a lot more progress in”
…her go-to advice to all women out there
“My advice for women would be to believe in themselves and give yourself the grace to make mistakes to figure things out don’t be so self-critical that you don’t give yourself room to grow or to learn. Also, I think as women we need to talk to ourselves with the same kindness that we show our best friends because so many times I’ve seen women are so self-critical of themselves that they tend to pull them pull themselves down and I wish that more women showed themselves kindness. It’s okay to lean on your loved ones when you feel like you need their help because not every mountain needs to be conquered solo there’s nothing wrong with asking for help. Most importantly my advice would be to check on yourself at least once a week if not every day because prioritising yourself is a form of self-care it doesn’t make you selfish and it doesn’t make you self centred we are made to believe that a lot of times and that’s not true checking on yourself is the biggest form of self-love you can show yourself”.
All Images: Anshulakapoor/IG.
