Retro Express | Will The Real Women Please Stand Up?

I have a confession to make. I will not be able to recognise Disha Patani or Tara Sutaria in a photograph without a caption, let alone in real life. Ditto for Asin, Ileana D’Cruz and Mrunal Thakur. I also had a hard time telling Kriti Sanon from Kiara Advani or Shanaya Kapoor from Khushi Kapoor or Vaani Kapoor, although now that I have subjected myself to several tests, I can finally do so. I could recognise Bhumi Pednekar until she went all Royals on me, growing abs and duck lips. And I may be generalising here but every single ‘young’ actress looks exactly the same to me: the hair, the makeup, the styling, the abs—the whole package. They look like clones of each other. And I don’t know anyone in real life who looks like them. Even Nora Fatehi (who I recognise) said a similar thing last year in an interview with Rajeev Masand. In another interesting interview, Sheeba Chaddha referred to this phenomenon as a “commonality code”: an assembly line of new talent, where everyone is trying to look like Kylie Jenner and can be used interchangeably.

It is as though 'skin, skin, skin and abs, abs, abs’ seems to be the conformity test. And don’t even get me started on the faces: reconstruction, Botox and fillers have made any kind of individuality fade into oblivion, and they all look like vacuum sealed packages, going the Hollywood way. Think Anne Hathaway, Lindsay Lohan, Dakota Johnson, Emma Stone, Demi Moore and the queen of the frozen forehead, Nicole Kidman.

In Bollywood, they call it the Katrina trend—this level of homogeneity in bodies and face/makeup. Soon after Katrina realised she couldn’t act, she focused with a vengeance on fitness: sculpting, toning, shaping. Everyone followed suit. Suddenly, it became all about the body—the skinnier the better. No matter how quirky the character or how different, brave, strong or plain ‘badass’, the female lead is almost always skinny. She has abs and she makes a point to flaunt them, while the male leads are taking their shirts off. Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhatt and Priyanka Chopra have evolved into this toning and shaping mode too.

Perhaps, it all started in the 1990s: the globalization of Indian media also led to the ‘Hollywoodization’ of Indian cinema. The problem began when beauty pageants became the hunting ground for new talent. The entry of skinny women’s body types became the ideal, leading to a proliferation of gym culture, flourishing of cosmetic brands and circulation of Indian editions of international magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan.

Then there was the dangerous ‘size zero’ craze ushered by Kareena Kapoor for her character Pooja in Yash Raj’s Tashan (2008). While Kapoor willingly shed a lot of weight for this role, it set a disturbing precedent for young girls across the nation, and suddenly, everyone wanted to look like her—something that's neither possible nor sane. When asked about size zero in a later interview, Bebo said, "Never again."

Unlike yesteryears, when it was all about leaving things to the imagination, today is all about skin show. And, unfortunately, all skin looks the same because it has been to the same surgeon.

I miss the times when a voluptuous body type was valued in Indian cinema and actresses were not expected to be thin or lean. Before the fat-shaming and body-shaming movements, Hindi cinema had women who looked like real women. In the 50s and 60s, the likes of wholesome women—broad-shouldered, big-busted and wide-hipped—such as Nargis, Madhubala, Meena Kumari and Vyjayanthimala were the epitome of beauty, mostly clad in sarees. There was never much skin show, but the sensuality was in their body language, their eyes and their adaas.

Even in the early 70s, a curvy Nanda, Asha Parekh or a Mumtaz shook their booty with flamboyance and owned it, in their shapely tight-fitting kurtas, tunics and tights or bow-tied blouses and well-draped sarees, as they shimmied. In the later 1970s, grooming and body standards suddenly became the norm. Fashion evolved to more avant-garde styles: bell bottoms and short skirts demanded a certain body type. Zeenat Aman, Dimple Kapadia, Parveen Babi and Neetu Singh set the trend for svelte bodies with skin show.

In the 1980s, the curvy trend continued. But then, the demands became higher, with people like Sridevi and Rekha being body shamed, labelled ‘thunder thighs’ and such. And then the saree came back, and owned sensuality all over again. By the 90s, Madhuri Dixit, Raveena Tandon, Shilpa Shetty, Sridevi, Kajol, Rani Mukerji and Juhi Chawla owned their femininity, each with a distinct look and vibe. But they all appeared significantly thinner in their later movies. Even Sridevi, much later in 2013, looked much thinner on the cover of Vogue, post the release of English Vinglish (2012).

In the last 10-15 years, especially since Instagram, fitness has become the new cool—skinny is no longer enough; now it’s all about sculpting. Actresses have begun to flaunt their toned bodies, exercise regimens, beauty regimens and diets on their social media—except, everyone seems to be doing the exact same thing with the exact same results. So, everyone is fit and toned and plastic in the same way.

Which is why when I see a Sonakshi Sinha or a Parineeti Chopra or a Vidya Balan or even a Huma Qureshi on screen—owning their bodies and refusing to grow abs—I am reassured that a woman with curves is so much more relatable. That it is normal for a woman to look like she hasn’t been starving herself for weeks or living on a diet of black coffee and cigarettes. That everyone has a right to child-bearing hips, even if they don’t want to have children. “Women and curves are non-negotiable and I celebrate my femininity,” is what Balan said to a journalist not too long ago. More power to the likes of her.