Decoded: Why Bollywood actresses tend to fall for bad boys' Salman, Saif, others

At a national conclave recently a senior journalist told Kareena Kapoor Khan that she was meant to fly high in life by making powerful choices — be it selecting challenging movies or getting married to someone who had ‘quite a reputation’.
In her spontaneous reply, the outspoken Kareena quipped, “Are you saying Saif was not marriage material? I like bad boys. There is nothing wrong in that!” The ‘reputation’ the journalist was referring to is that he was a bit of a playboy in his younger days and shocked the industry by first marrying a much older woman — Amrita Singh. 

But is this all it takes for someone to be dubbed as a ‘bad boy’?

According to Richa Khetawat, a relationship expert and  couple’s counsellor, “Just because a person has had multiple romantic relationships before, he cannot be called ‘bad’. To date people is the most natural thing to do before actually finding the one and sometimes marriages may not work out. But the character of such a person cannot be called bad.”

A bad boy is someone who gets abusive, is a womaniser or a compulsive adulterer, or someone who has committed crimes. And such individuals, for sure, are not marriage material!

In fact, celebrity relationships with bad boys have usually ended in tears! Be it Aishwarya who ran far away from Salman Khan after he allegedly assaulted her physically or Sanjay Dutt, who was dumped by Madhuri Dixit soon after his arrest for illegal possession of arms. Zeenat Aman’s relationship, too, ended badly with Sanjay Khan, who was known for his abusive behaviour. 

So do we have a warped definition of the term ‘bad boy’? Relationship expert Nisha Jamvwal points out that the term ‘bad boy’ is used in two very different ways. “Strong and independent women don’t like pushovers. They want somebody who will stand up to their viewpoints. They don’t want their partners to be easy, but want strong, masculine and opinionated men. Bad boy here doesn’t mean irreverent. A bad boy just means someone who doesn’t necessarily play by the rules of society,” she elaborates.

The other explanation of a bad boy would be someone who has a rogue element, says Nisha. “The allure of danger has often attracted women. They may be macho and a lot of young women get attracted to this type,” she says.

Sandeep Reddy Vanga, the director of Arjun Reddy, a film that captures the ultimate bad boy’s character, agrees with this train of thought. 

“Girls may initially like them but later, they expect them to calm down. There is a dialogue in the film where Arjun Reddy says, ‘Sir, I am not a rebel without a cause.’ If he is a rebel with a cause, then in most cases, he will be a bad boy only in his youth. Such men will eventually calm down and become a good partner.”