EXCLUSIVE: Gauahar Khan opens up on age gap with Zaid Darbar, discusses the sexism behind the debate

In a patriarchal society, being a woman with a mind of her own is never appreciated. In B-town, we have seen several male actors being married to someone with a huge age difference. However, when an actress marries someone younger than her it sets tongues wagging. We saw how Priyanka Chopra was trolled for marrying Nick Jonas, who is ten years younger than her.

Similarly, Gauahar Khan and Zaid Darbar faced criticism while they decided to make their relationship official. Post their marriage, in an exclusive interview with Bollywood Bubble, Gauahar opened up about how women are subjected to a lot of trolling when there’s an age gap.

In our society, women are subjected to a lot of trolling when there’s an age gap. We asked Gauahar how did she handle all of it or did that affected her in any way. The actress shared, “When we just started featuring together, because we were hardly dating for that time, there was a lot of confusion because one stupid article was written on a vague number. It was written 12 years age gap which is wrong and I called up that person (reporter) and said ‘Agar aap ko likhna hi hai toh aap puchlo na kitna age gap hai. Sahi number likhdo toh kya farak pad jayega?But if you want to present facts falsely that’s up to you. It didn’t affect us but every headline was only about that. ‘Apne se 12 saal chote ladke se shaadi’. The age gap between us is not 12 years. It’s 6-6.5 years. And I am like even if its 6, 7, 12, 14 how does it matter? If a man is allowed to marry a woman who is probably 14-15 years younger than him, why is a woman not allowed that? Or why isn’t it questioned then? It is sexism. But honestly, we didn’t get affected. I got affected by those headlines because that becomes the description of what your relationship is, initially but not now anymore.”

The Begum Jaan actress continued, “But even on my wedding day there were few media houses that thrive on news like this, wrote the headline- ‘Apne se 12 saal chhote’. 12, 13, 15 koi farak nahi padta but sahi number likh lo na toh shayad aapko hi journalism mein thodi credit mil jaye. It’s sad that people comment only when the woman is older. They go ‘Oh there must be something in this’. Arre yaar jeeyo aur jeene do kya farak padta hai. But I am glad that 99 per cent of people loved the fact that they could actually see true love and not some hidden agenda behind our relationship and that’s what we care about.”

You can check out the entire interview below:

And did you know? Zaid had initially lied to Gauahar about his age. Click on the following story to know how the actress had reacted.

Also Read: EXCLUSIVE: This is how Gauahar Khan reacted when Zaid Darbar lied to her about his age