The lawyer and media powerhouse, Peya Jannatul discusses the high cost of being a vocal woman in the public eye, and why she believes being greedy for your ambitions is the most honest thing a girl can be.
Peya Jannatul is a woman who refuses the neat lines society draws around her. She moves through the world on her own terms, and in doing so, she unsettles expectations. In Bangladesh, women in the public eye navigate a space that constantly measures their visibility, their ambition, their voice. Success is celebrated, provided it is contained, softened, and made socially palatable. Power is tolerated, only if it does not threaten established hierarchies. To exist fully in that space is to test the boundaries of what is acceptable, and to demand more than token recognition. Most would fold under that kind of invisible pressure. Peya doesn’t.
Peya’s presence is multidimensional, not unlike the women in our lives usually are, and it’s deliberate. She inhabits multiple roles: model, lawyer, activist, mother, and refuses to let any of them define her entirely. The fascination isn’t just that she moves between worlds, but the coherence of contradiction, it’s how she does it. Peya is someone who is at once fiercely intellectual, deeply empathetic, and unflinchingly visible. She commands the camera as she does the courtroom, and her choices, both public and private, are a quiet assertion of autonomy.
This conversation is not about celebrating a single achievement or milestone. It is about engaging with a woman who shapes her own orbit in a world that constantly tries to redraw the boundaries around her.
1) Throughout your career, you have been reinventing yourself. What drives you to take on such difficult new challenges?
I have never believed a woman should be confined to a single definition.
When I won Miss Bangladesh in 2007, and later an international title, many assumed that would be the full arc of my story. A crown can be a powerful symbol, but it can also become a ceiling if you let it. I chose not to.
I moved into the media. I studied law. I began advocacy work for women and children who have experienced abuse. Each shift surprised people. But for me, it felt instinctive. Every time people tried to box me into a single narrative, I chose growth instead.
I am most alive in discomfort, in the process of learning, stretching, entering spaces where women are subtly told, “This is not for you.” Reinvention has never been a strategy for relevance. It is a strategy for survival. In a society that constantly tries to shrink women, expanding yourself becomes an act of resistance.
2) Public women in Bangladesh face heavy criticism. How do you cope with backlash and attention?
A public woman in Bangladesh is expected to perform a careful balancing act: visible, but never excessive; articulate, but never disruptive; accomplished, but never intimidating.
Criticism is almost inevitable.
In the beginning, I internalised it. I questioned myself. Over time, I began to understand that backlash often reflects societal discomfort more than personal inadequacy. When a woman claims ownership of her ambition, her voice, her body, her profession, she unsettles expectations that were never designed to accommodate her autonomy.
I no longer feel compelled to answer everything. I have chosen discipline over defensiveness. Silence, when intentional, can be powerful. Progress, when consistent, is louder than rebuttal.
That said, strength is not emotional numbness. I am deliberate about protecting my mental space. Discernment, knowing what warrants engagement and what deserves distance, is its own form of power.
3) Your maternity shoot with Zurhem was powerful. Has motherhood changed your approach to modelling?
Motherhood has transformed me, not by softening me, but by deepening me.
The maternity shoot with Zurhem was deeply intentional. Our culture venerates motherhood in rhetoric, yet often asks pregnant women to retreat physically, to conceal their bodies during the very moment they are performing one of life’s most profound biological acts. The contradiction fascinates me.
For me, that shoot was not about aesthetics. It was about reclaiming the narrative. Pregnancy is frequently framed as fragility. I see it as power in its purest biological form.
Motherhood has made my modelling more conscious. I am less interested in presenting clothes and more invested in embodying stories, particularly those phases of womanhood that are rarely afforded dignity, sensuality, and authority at once.
Today, when I stand before a camera, I stand as a mother, a legal professional, and a woman who refuses to negotiate her presence.
4) As a lawyer, what are your hopes and concerns for the new administration, particularly with fewer women in elected positions?
As a member of the legal profession, I measure governance not by slogans but by institutional integrity.
My concern is representation, not only as symbolism, but as substance. When women are underrepresented in elected bodies, policymaking risks becoming abstract. Issues such as family rights, workplace protections, gender-based violence, and child welfare require lived insight, not theoretical sympathy.
Through my legal work, I have witnessed how institutional gaps reverberate through individual lives. Structural inequities are not theoretical. They are deeply personal for those who endure them.
My hope is that the new administration prioritises institutional integrity and the rule of law above political expediency. A democracy cannot fully mature while half its population remains underrepresented in decision-making spaces. Women’s political empowerment is not a gesture of goodwill. It is a constitutional responsibility.
5) What do you most hope to be remembered for?
Not for a crown. Not for a photoshoot. Not even for a title.
I would like to be remembered as someone who refused imposed limits.
As proof that beauty and intellect can coexist. That media visibility and legal seriousness are not contradictions. That motherhood and ambition are not mutually exclusive identities.
If one young girl in Bangladesh looks at my journey and thinks, and thinks, “I can be greedy for my ambitions and there is nothing wrong in it,” feels that she’s entitled to pursue her ambitions without apology, that will be enough.
Legacy, to me, is not about applause. It is about courage sustained over time. It is about evolving without seeking approval.
Rapid-fire questions
1. The best part about being in the spotlight?
Using it as a voice for the masses.
2. Script or runway?
A script that narrates the runway of life.
3. Most challenging case or toughest shoot?
Every assignment brings its own challenge.
4. Dream role: villain or hero?
Real life’s roles. Knowing when to be a hero, when to be a villain.
5. Which cause is closest to your heart right now?
Stop war. Save futures.
6. Pet peeve?
People who are late.
7. Last song you listened to?
Mon Meteche Mon Moyurir Ki Khelai by Asha Bhosle.
8. Favourite lunch spot in Dhaka?
My own kitchen.
9. What does “success” mean to you?
Making a positive difference in others’ lives.
10. If you could instantly learn a new skill, what would it be?
Controlling anger and speaking less.