If one were to pin down Deepika Padukone’s performance in Goliyon ki Rasleela Ramleela to one thing, it would have to be ‘the gaze’, the way she perennially stares at the well-oiled, muscular body of hero Ranveer Singh. It’s a look of frank lust, unapologetic longing. What’s more, she also follows it up by planting almost a 100 smouldering kisses on him, of her own free will. And, each time the two meet, she is the one who turns on the heat, and how. Now flashback to the bashful glances of Meena Kumari in Phool Aur Pathhar as Dharmendra, in his shirtless glory, towered above her. Somewhere in between these two films lies the tale of an overhaul of gender roles and expectations in Bollywood.
Something similar happened a couple of years ago in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara when a delicate Katrina Kaif, Hrithik Roshan’s mobike-riding ladylove, smothered him with a rather determined kiss. Aiyyaa found the domesticated Rani Mukherjee taking a lead with her rather gratuitous and fetishised gaze at Prithviraj, overturning the age-old argument that it’s the men who are biologically determined to stare at women while the latter are supposed to watch themselves being stared at. In Ishqiya, Vidya Balan was full-on teasing, titillating and raunchy, the kind of woman who wouldn’t think twice about using her sexuality to wreak vengeance when spurned. In The Dirty Picture too she was hardly the victim, playing the several men in her life, in fact giving it back to them for their hypocrisy and chauvinism. Paro in Dev D went a step ahead, she took the mattress right into the sarson fields to make love to Devdas. Coming up next: Huma Qureshi as Muniya in Dedh Ishqiya. She has no time for love but will use her sexuality to get what she wants in life.
These are just a few good women—who sociologist Shiv Visvanathan refers to as the “six-pack women”—among the many in Hindi films who are getting assertive about their sexuality. It’s the heroine making all the moves now, enticing the man, planting kisses with abandon, having pre-marital sex without any moral compunction. Be it Cocktail or Kai Po Che, Ishaqzaade, Jab Tak Hai Jaan or Shuddh Desi Romance, the lady is right up there on top, while the men seem to be just hanging in there. “It’s an equal game. There is no hierarchy or pecking order. The man understands the sexual contract,” says Visvanathan. “The man is more responding than leading. The woman is cool, the man confused,” says adman and columnist Santosh Desai. In the forthcoming Gulaab Gang, the heroine is the hero, she doesn’t even need a man. “For films, and society, these are progressive, liberating times. Women are finding their rightful expression,” says actress Shilpa Shukla, most recently seen in BA Pass. “It says a lot about our audience. They are willing to see a heroine as more than mere eye-candy. They want to see them as strong, in equal relationships with the men,” says actress Parineeti Chopra. Sexy, thankfully, is not a slut anymore. In fact, they are the new role models, the way for young girls to be.
“There is most definitely a shift in the way the heroine is expected to behave today, from the earlier days when she was just the hero’s object of desire who has to look good but can never overshadow him,” says Paoli Dam, who played the lead in the Vivek Agnihotri flick Hate Story, about a woman who isn’t just assertive but literally becomes a sexual predator. “Men probably fantasise about women seducing them.... It’s also a signal to women that engaging in sex isn’t enough, they have to do it well. This is quite a change from the blushing, demure heroine who looks down as soon as the hero’s eyes meet hers,” says soas professor Rachel Dwyer. So is the assertive woman the wave of the future? Film producer Guneet Monga is a tad circumspect. “Earlier, you had the vamps, now it’s moved to the lead women characters,” she says. Ironically for Indian cinema, it’s in the beginning, in the ’30s and the ’40s, that the heroines, be it Devika Rani or Sulochana, were least squeamish about their sexuality. “The male gaze objectified them much later,” says Soumik Sen, maker of Gulaab Gang. It’s the following ‘Victorian years’ that turned vamps into the ones with an assumed eroticism and evil ways while heroines had to subsume their sensuality to present the pious face of womanhood. In between, there were a few suggestions of sensuality but things seem to have come a full circle only now with heroines not just getting matter-of-fact but turning sexuality into a statement of sorts.
Why and how has this change come? How much are these films a faithful reflection of our times? “As a society, we are becoming more sexually expressive. So, naturally, the heroine is also more forthcoming with what she feels,” says actress Divya Dutta. So as urban Indian women change, so do their on-screen representations. Along with economic, social and emotional independence, they are also expressing their desires—they will not push their sexuality under the carpet.
Two’s a crowd Sushant Singh Rajput and Parineeti Chopra in Shuddh Desi Romance
The definition of polite ‘womanly’ behaviour has also changed. But is this assertion of sexuality in cinema empowering? Or are we creating new, convenient stereotypes? Actress Richa Chaddha demarcates the fine line: “When you celebrate the sexuality for yourself, it’s a good thing...but when it’s there to pander to a man’s fantasies, like in the form of an item number, then it’s not.”
For the fact is the more nuanced portrayals of sexuality are still missing. Actress Gul Panag thinks it’s just a drop in the ocean. “For every one such role, there are 100 others where women are nothing but candyfloss objects of desire,” she says. Actress Raima Sen too doesn’t feel the heroine has evolved. Indeed, speaking on Bengali cinema, she feels the role of the female protagonist has diminished. She points out that her grandmother Suchitra Sen, the legendary heroine from the Golden Age of Bengali cinema, portrayed characters which are hard to come by today. “In Bengali films, the female lead usually had a commanding presence, exuding an inner strength. Today’s aggressiveness is devoid of that, it’s forced and artificial, pandering to stereotypes,” she says. A few recent films do offer a ray of hope where the woman has a mind of her own and is comfortable about her sexuality (see ‘Why did she go away?’).
So what does this sexual freedom amount to? Is it just a marker of the freedom of the body? What about her mind? “Sexuality in cinema is vanity-driven. Films that portray true liberation are few and far between,” says Monga. “There are few scripts which delve into the mind and intellect of an independent woman. Her aggressiveness and assertiveness is almost always limited to the physical,” says Roopa Ganguly, whose career highlight remains the doughty Draupadi of TV.
Also, the new Bollywood heroine may begin by breaking a few taboos but in most films there’s also a U-turn in the end to reinforce all the old detestable cliches and stereotypes. Bad girls either finish last, or they turn virtuous! In Cocktail, there’s the hot and reckless Deepika and a pious and helpless Diana Penty. There’s an intriguing relationship dynamic between the two even as they woo the hero Saif. But all has to end well in the safe and secure world of conformity. For Leela in Ramleela, her “pehli raat” has to be “Ram ke saath”.
Watch, but with love Anoushka Sharma steps out in Matru ki Bijli ka Mandola
There’s also discomfort of another kind. The heaving bosom, the peekaboo bra strap, the prominent midriff or lip-bite routine of Vidya Balan in The Dirty Picture may have been uninhibited and playful but also left one wondering if in celebrating the sexuality of a ‘sex goddess’, the film actually also ended up pandering to the voyeur in every male viewer. Did it get garbed in the packaging of a modern, progressive film?
So, in her long road to emancipation, does this sexual assertiveness mark another “arrival”? Or is this just another posture the Bollywood heroine is being forced to adopt? While Paoli Dam feels the new “aggressiveness” is a reflection of the reality of today’s independent and confident woman, she agrees that the portrayals still suffer from the patriarchal hangover of a male-dominated industry. For instance, in Hate Story her sexual aggressiveness is triggered only after she is physically and emotionally violated by a man.
No wonder filmmaker Dibakar Banerji sounds a note of scepticism and caution. “Our films reflect the biases, values, prejudices and beliefs of the filmmakers who are mostly patriarchal, feudal men. Women, for them, are a valuable economic resource and it’s all about ‘managing’ them to reach out to the consumers. No wonder every heroine post 35 turns obsolete, there is a constant search for a new 18-year-old,” he says. Every cliche is broken for the sake of newness, yet new stereotypes get established. According to him, the portrayals have regressed in the past 7-8 years. “We are seeing a dangerous mix of the old patriarchy with high gloss, modern consumerism,” he says.
The problem is not sexuality itself but in the hypocrisy that surrounds it. “It lies in trivialising it at will. Today, if a woman is sexy in a film it’s considered great; but if she is so on the road she gets heckled,” says Monga. If the heroine opts to say yes, she should also be shown saying no. But that day is still far. Right now, the emphasis is on the yes, whether she likes it or not.
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Kalki Koechlin, Actress:
There is a danger in confusing sexuality for empowerment. Most female sexuality on screen is unrealistically glamorised to serve the fantasies of men, not to empower the woman. What often happens in Bollywood is that the woman is sexually confident and strong to start with but eventually falls in love and gives up her wild ways for marriage or there is some moral frame to which she ends up adhering to. Empowerment is when women are treated in the same way as men. When a woman can be deglamorised and still be the main lead. There are people who’ve done this way back, a Bandit Queen or a Mirch Masala but I’m having trouble thinking of equivalents in today’s Bollywood. That’s not to say that the sexiness and sexuality displayed today doesn’t have a place at all in women’s empowerment. I think women are gaining confidence and attitude from such displays. I think stereotypes will always exist, as long as we have a capitalist market, because it’s stereotypes that sell products. However, as long as women can reign in Bollywood, as long as women exist in the network of entertainment, those stereotypes will keep being questioned and broken because it’s in the nature of human beings to be free-willed and not imprisoned.”
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Bipasha Basu, Actress:
It’s just a popular perception that heroines are getting more sexually assertive in Hindi films. I don’t totally agree with it. Back in 2001, I acted in Ajnabee, a film that spoke of wife-swapping, in 2003 I acted in Jism where the woman used her body for deception. Since then there have been several such films—Aitraaz, The Dirty Picture, Ishqiya and now Ramleela. But you can count these films on your fingertips. In almost 80% of films the woman is still the love interest who does the song-n-dance and gets saved by the hero. What we have is one-off films that become game- changers for a bit. It’s a cycle that keeps getting repeated in Bollywood. A film comes, becomes topical and sets a trend but soon the wheel is reset and reinvented. And something else takes over. There are no sudden changes here. Things come up, subside, go away and come back again.”
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Aditi Rao Hydari, Actress:
As a woman working in the film industry I fill a certain box: ‘feminine’ as opposed to ‘bubbly’ or ‘sexy’. There are prefixes attached to my name that are a byproduct of being ‘feminine’—delicate, fragile, waif-like, petite. I feel claustrophobic in these boxes, especially when people who don’t know me shut me into one of them. This happens to each of us. Somewhere we are filling a stereotype for someone else’s comfort. I believe strength (of personality and character) and being desirable are not mutually exclusive and they shouldn’t be. A girl needn’t be apologetic for her beauty or sexuality. It’s the most natural thing but the intention behind how it’s used and why it is there is quite often questionable because people have rather skewed boundaries between obvious objectification and real liberation. It’s all happening in cinema—kissing, making out, sexual politics, all of it, but such a big deal is made of it, and in the case of women especially it’s relegated often by many sections of the media to shock value alone. The day we understand that kissing and intimacy are natural—and a part of the journey of love and an honest depiction of love on screen—will be the day we can actually talk about the awareness of sexuality in its truest sense, not just when it is used as a form of titillation and voyeurism. We have a large section that very easily accepts double entendres and innuendos in dialogue and songs but is scandalised by a kiss on screen. There is also the problem of superficial liberation which is very misleading and dangerous, like showing a gun-toting, educated girl who makes her own decisions and is the darling of her family but may end up being a ‘victim’ for the ‘greater cause’ of honour or love. The day this hypocrisy lessens and we can actually even begin to acknowledge and grasp the fine nuances of these situations is the day we can truly talk about changing perceptions of women and sexuality in cinema.”
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Tillotama Shome, Actress:
The changes in women characters from a pious goddess to the “sexy sexy mujhe log bole” to the kissing heroine are just mild variations of each other. It’s all about the monetization of the hyper- sexualised female body in selling things. There is no real change. It can be empowering if the assertion of sexuality or its transgressive explorations create an understanding and not just titillation and further stereotyping in the minds of the viewers. I also feel that the portrayal of heroines will change in a profound manner when the portrayal of our 'heroes' gets a real punch and is questioned. I only say this because in our country the commerce demands hero driven films, and hence a change in the representation of men will be a boon for all. I wish we could see real men as heroes, who might feel fear, self loathing, cowardice, and not just want to get into fights. Certainly not these 'manly men'. Neither men nor women can enjoy any freedom if we keep “othering” each other and constructing gendered expectations.
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Those Feathers, That Cheek
India’s leading ladies: cool, regress, getting there
Karma
- Devika Rani in Karma
Easy-going and cool - Vyjanthimala in Sangam
Coquettish and flirty
Mughal-E-Azam
- Madhubala in Mughal-E-Azam
Sensual is sexy - Saira Banu in Purab Aur Paschim
Western is evil - Sharmila Tagore in Evening in Paris
Fun and feisty - Zeenat Aman in Qurbani
Casually, coolly sexy - Dimple Kapadia in Bobby
Baby doll - Sridevi in Mr India
Male fantasy
Beta
- Madhuri Dixit in Beta
Rising heartbeats
Jism
- Bipasha Basu in Jism
Body play
Murder
- Mallika Sherawat in Murder
Counting kisses - Priyanka Chopra in Fashion
Sex to success - Vidya Balan in Ishqiya
Kill Bill - Rani Mukherji in Aiyya
Female gazin’ - Deepika Padukone in Ram Leela and Parineeti in Ishaqzaade and Shuddh Desi Romance Sexy as a statement
By Namrata Joshi with Dola Mitra in Calcutta
