Meghana Raj Quotes

The industry confines us in boxes, but we have to prove that we are women of substance.

I don't do what I do to try and break a glass ceiling.

The most obvious thing I do is I don't wear a burqa, and I'm definitely not oppressed. Plus, I'm quite obviously an independent thinker, which means as soon as I walk on stage, I dispel a lot of those stereotypes.

My mum is a rock star, and I idolise her. She was born in a conservative Muslim family, where the girls were not educated much, and she was required to wear a burkha. She felt repressed but dreamt of driving her own car, walking around in jeans and wearing sunglasses, and she did.

I can't just go out in a T-Shirt and say, 'Hey, today I'm not wearing a bra.'

Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.

There's a power in women being women. There's a role for men, but we don't have to be men, because we're women. I think that representing that on television is a cool thing.

I'm getting a lot of roles as women who are very powerful. I think that's a reflection of me as a person.

In our society, the women who break down barriers are those who ignore limits.

Every woman has the right to be beautiful.

Feminism is not dead, by no means. It has evolved. If you don't like the term, change it, for Goddess' sake. Call it Aphrodite, or Venus, or bimbo, or whatever you want; the name doesn't matter, as long as we understand what it is about, and we support it.

There's nothing wrong with looking like a woman and going in the workplace and doing everything a man can do but looking 1,000 percent like a lady.

I'm a feminist, a 21st-century feminist - which means choice and freedom. One has the right to be both glamorous and ethically structured.

The ladies of comedy now are comfortable dressing up. It's not forbidden anymore.

I think, as women, we have to stop being scared to be the women we want to be and we have to raise our daughters to be the women they want to be - not the women we think they should be.

One of the achievements of our generation of feminists was to emancipate women from the division between being interested in clothes and appearance, and being serious and ambitious. I am of the first generation that could go to Biba, wear miniskirts and get a degree.

I am constantly struggling to show people that there is more to me than my appearance. You do have to try and overcome those hurdles. Female actresses need to be given the chance to be more than how they look.

I think that young women and little girls need to see that they don't have to be the damsel in distress. They don't have to not show their strength. They don't have to be whatever the stereotype is or the tropes that we go to in our minds.

During the era when women were burning their bras - which, by the way, they never actually did - but when women were first becoming liberated, I was 23. And I met a woman who asked, 'Don't you feel bad because you're sort of acting like the stupid airhead blonde?' And I totally surprised myself. I said, 'Liberation can also come from the inside.'

Maybe even at six or seven, I knew that, sweet as they were on the surface, all fairy tales needed a feminist shake up.

Women feel empowered when they can do the things that are supposed to be only for men, you know? It breaks boundaries, it's liberating, and it's empowering when you feel like, 'Well, I can do that, too.'

I've done so many commencement speeches at colleges and law schools, and I tell young women that there are no glass ceilings because those were broken by a lot of women who came before us. You can be anyone you want to be. You can do anything you want to do.

If you are a woman and an actor, it does not mean that you have to contain or limit yourself to just being that.

Apparently, I hear from people I always play strong women. I don't see them that way.

During the Me Too breakthrough, I was hanging out with Emma Thompson and Emily Watson - two people I've looked up to my entire life. Talking to those women was so empowering.