Meet Tanya! Your local brown girl who hails from the motherland. Tanya strives to show girls like herself, there is nothing wrong in chasing your dreams, especially when those dreams lay within an industry that is image conscious and at times pretentious such as Fashion and Modelling. While continuing her own career in Modelling and Styling, Tanya founded an inclusive collective called, MasalaMobb where she gathers like-minded creatives in all art forms and hosts events where these people can create, explore and build relationships.

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Tell us about the path you took to get to where you are today.

Being raised in Mumbai, India aka Film City, Tanya was surrounded by creatives and orthodox ideologies based around women in the acting and modelling industries. Tanya spent most of her life being bullied and not being so comfortable and confident in herself and her abilities, but had a hidden passion for fashion since a young age. She always wished and hoped that one day the horizons would broaden and women of all shapes, sizes and races would be more sought out in the world of modelling. It wasn’t she herself realized she needed to be the change she wanted to see and decided to get up, take her dreams and run with them. Her advice to any woman wanting to pursue anything in their lives is to not to listen to anyone except yourself. Take your anger, frustration, sadness etc and turn it into motivation and drive. You can do whatever you want and no one can stop you. GO GET EM’ !
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How important is it to you to make South Asian women feel empowered?

Tanya started doing what she does as a means to show and empower anyone and everyone, especially her fellow South Asian women. It’s something she lives and breathes. Tanya makes it a point to bring forward and thoroughly support her fellow South Asian models/creatives by creating with them, promoting them and working on events that showcase them. She works with many POC creatives as well, hoping one day we would be part of the norm rather than just being accessories in the fashion/modelling industries.
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What is your personal motto or mission statement?

Tanya believes no one should feel they are in any way not enough. Life is short lived and she believes that you must grasp every opportunity that is thrown at you and if you find yourself in a position where you cannot find any open doors, break the walls down! This is what Tanya lives and breathes by.
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Besides your work, what are you passionate about?

Apart from the arts, Tanya is passionate about world news, politics and human rights. She spends a lot of her time learning, researching and discussing LGBTQ+ , Race, Religion and Region based topics.
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Where can one find you on your days off?

On days off, you can find Tanya eating! She loves to eat and socialize with family and friends. She spends a lot of her time in restaurants and bars. She also loves to lounge and do mini spa days with her sister at home.

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How do you balance work, life, family?

Balancing work, life and family is a skill Tanya has yet to master. She finds her weeks go by in juggling everything while managing to make it work, but could definitely use a planner or maybe a tutorial on how to use her phone calendar…If you have any tips and tricks definitely reach out!

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Stay connected with Tanya

• Contact her on Instagram – @shelikesnoone / @masalamobb