Mainstream Indian cinema applies an unsettling double standard to its women, and lately, Janhvi Kapoor finds herself at its fault line. In Hindi cinema, she has headlined films such as Mili and Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl, portraying women with agency, ambition and emotional depth. But step into the world of big-ticket Telugu commercial cinema, and a very different transformation takes place. In films such as Devara: Part 1 and the recently released Peddi, the actress often appears less as a character and more as a visual commodity. The gap between the empowered woman celebrated off screen and the objectified woman presented on screen is an industry-wide contradiction.In Peddi, the camera frequently functions as an intrusive gaze rather than a storytelling device. While the hero’s dialogue may praise the heroine’s beauty, the visual language repeatedly fragments her body, lingering on her waist and chest rather than engaging with her as a person. More troubling is how the narrative reportedly uses her suffering. Sexual violence against her character becomes a convenient plot mechanism, existing primarily to fuel the hero’s anger and moral crusade.When she later confronts him about her trauma, his justification — that violence is simply his way of expressing love — is framed not as a red flag but as something to be understood, even accepted. It exposes a familiar hypocrisy. The same violation is presented as monstrous when committed by the villain, yet romanticised when carried out by the superstar protagonist.The instinctive response is to blame the actress. Critics often accuse performers of ‘selling out’ for lucrative projects opposite stars such as Ram Charan or N T Rama Rao Jr. But that criticism overlooks the larger machinery at work. For many actresses, entering the Telugu and wider pan-Indian commercial ecosystem may be less an artistic choice than a strategic calculation. The industry’s biggest budgets, widest releases and most powerful star vehicles come with an implicit bargain. Visibility, scale and box-office legitimacy are available, but often at the cost of the narrative. The actress becomes a glamorous interlude between action sequences, her role is carefully calibrated to enhance the hero’s appeal rather than establish her own.Technically, the choice exists. It is either accepting a diminished role in the country’s most commercially successful films or stepping away from that level of visibility altogether.The cycle has become painfully predictable. A trailer drops featuring a heavily stylised dance number. Critics point out the regressive writing. Social media fills with complaints about objectification and outdated gender politics. Then the film opens to massive collections, validating the very formula that attracted criticism in the first place.The economics are impossible to ignore. As long as audiences continue to reward these films at the box office, producers have little incentive to rethink them. The machine keeps running because it remains profitable. Even institutions meant to act as cultural gatekeepers often appear inconsistent. The censor board may scrutinise political dialogue or social commentary, yet mainstream entertainers that normalise stalking, coercion or possessive masculinity frequently pass with little controversy.Until major stars, filmmakers and studios face tangible financial consequences for reducing women to narrative props, little is likely to change. Audiences will continue to leave theatres with the same uneasy feeling. They have watched a woman occupy significant screen time, endure immense suffering and drive key plot points, yet somehow never exist as a fully formed human being. That is the contradiction at the heart of contemporary commercial cinema. Women are more visible than ever. But visibility is not the same thing as being seen.
