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Stop trolling Suhana Khan for Maybelline Endorsement! Star kids are not your punching bag, if you don't like them, stop paying attention!
Celebrity kids are not your enemy, nor your punching bag! Suhana Khan has yet again become the punching bag for the general Indian audience with too much free time on their hands.
After becoming the new face of Maybelline, Suhana Khan, Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter, is being called out again for being an undeserving nepotism baby. It’s time to let celebrity kids be! Please
Outside of being King Khan’s only daughter, Suhana Khan is a theatre artist, movie actress and social media star. She is set to make her debut with Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies (2023).
Celebrity kids being attacked for doing things that celebrity kids do is nothing new.
There is something to be inquired about why such news is always met with hostility. It is understandable to gauge a stark difference between the amount of privilege some may have, screaming nepotism is redundant.
Consider it a hereditary privilege. Most of us have received an education or the comfort we currently enjoy on the backs of our parents’ lifelong efforts and hard work. Each of us can pinpoint the exact ways we are better off than so many others without really working for it.
However, in a community that finds easy targets in women and young people, celebrity kids fit the bill.
Being in the public eye at such young ages, people choose to watch their every little move. The switch-up is quick in terms of whether to swoon over or attack a celebrity.
I consider it a “royalty effect”. Wherein we are in awe of the sheer privilege that celebrity children have, and their easy access to tough spots of the industries. We become doubly critical of whether their skills live up to the hype.
Media houses quickly feed into this demand for schadenfreude, the need to see the rise and fall of rich, privileged kids.
They turn to churn out constant content with every move made by them. Suhana Khan’s peers, Jahnvi Kapoor, Alaya Furniturewala and Ananya Pandey all experience the same scrutiny.
The animosity and negative energy surrounding the nepotism debate are very much on us as a community. There is a fresh talent that may not be from as glittery a background, but we collectively still prefer drama to talent and trolling to appreciation.
Why not channel the energy that we spent crying, ‘Nepotism’ on hyping a non-insider who made it with sheer talent?
We seek rumours and moments of dishonour over respecting celebrities as humans and not being invested in their lives.
At the same time, I acknowledge that a lot of celebrity success relies on public opinion, but it is unhealthy for both parties if one constantly spits vitriol or micro-observes the other.
Aside from watching the current slew of celebrity children grow up, we continue to see it. News channels continue to microscopically cover young children such as Raha, Alia Bhatt’s daughter; Taimur Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor Khan’s son; Vamika, Anushka Sharma’s daughter; Aaradhya, Aishwarya Rai’s daughter; Malti Marie, Priyanka Chopra’s daughter and many more.
This gives birth to needless discourse, passing harmful, toxic remarks on minors and children, which is a crime in and of itself. Our deep interest in the lives of strangers is a red flag, calling for introspection and some hobby searching.
No matter how much we bad mouth them, many of the celebrity children will choose their parents’ career paths and continue to appear in the limelight. How about we earn the qualifications we ask of others, flourish, and leave the acting to whoever wants to act; how they want to act?
We as audience or spectators must remember, we are consumers; our attention enabled nepotism in the film industry and big international brands are encashing it. Way before Suhana Khan decided to be an actress, people were running (fan) pages for her, detailing everything from her height to skin tone and partner! And the paparazzi were following her since she was a child.
This hyper-focus on a star kid’s life didn’t happen overnight, the media steadily fed it to the public, and the masses consumed it blindly.
For any brand, an ambassador is their representative to the masses. Our interest in the lives of celebrity kids ensures these companies that their choice of an ambassador is a safe business investment! Brands are here for making a profit, they are banking star power that; they don’t care how they earn that numbers!
Another great idea is to only be a critic where you get paid for it. That and also practising the magic of free will. If there’s a brand being promoted by a celebrity we don’t like, we simply stop using it instead of screaming about it on social media.
Similarly, no one is forcing us to watch movies with actors we are convinced cannot act and are relying on blood ties. The choice to refuse is more powerful than watching it anyway only to complain about it later.
A great idea is also to not be interested at all in star kids because what’s wrong with you?
Live and let live, and don’t be a sicko, please and thank you.
Image source: Maybelline, edited on CanvaPro
I am Ria from New Delhi. I'm a student of political science and law and I have a lot to say apparently. read more...
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