Karan Johar Opens Up On His Struggle With Body Image Issues: I Felt I Was Failing My Parents

Karan Johar is no stranger to the distasteful jokes that are made about his body language and his sexuality. The filmmaker has always been vocal about how he has struggled with his body image. In a recent interview, the actor recalled his struggle with body dysmorphia and how he used to attend voice modulation classes in secret to change his ‘effeminate voice.’

In a conversation with Faye D’Souza, Karan Johar opened up about how he felt that he had let down his parents because he was ‘effeminate.’ He mentioned that he was different than the other boys in his school and that made him feel more conscious about himself. He said, “I felt I failed a lot as a child first. I felt I was failing my parents. I felt I wasn’t the boy that they should have had. I was conditioned to believe that because I was effeminate. I was unlike all the other boys in my school.”

Talking about his childhood, he recalled an incident where he performed at a function in his school. He mentioned that some people were ‘sneering and laughing’ at his performance, while his mother watched him in the audience. He mentioned that this incident made him more conscious about his body. He also revealed that he used to go to a public speaking class for his voice, but he never talked about it to his parents.

The director said, “There was a gentleman there who told me that I had an effeminate voice and that it isn’t going to be easy in life for me. He sent me to a class that would bring some kind of baritone in my voice. All this time, I was telling my dad that I was going for computer classes because I didn’t want to tell them that this is what I was going to do.”

In the same conversation, Johar mentioned that he continues to battle body dysmorphia even today. He said that he always wears oversized clothes to feel more comfortable. On the work front, Johar is currently producing the Vicky Kaushal-Triptii Dimri starrer ‘Bad Newz.’