From Hollywood to Bollywood: The whittling waistlines of Indian actresses
If I could travel to any part of the globe, India would be it. But as much as I love Indian food and culture, I’m not all that hip on Bollywood and the representation of Indian women in film. Luckily reader Kara (a.k.a. Filmi Girl) is a big fan. About 15 years ago, a friend gave her a cassette tape with the soundtrack from the 1980s hit Bollywood film Maine Pyaar Kiye. She was hooked. A few years later, she began watching the films the songs were centered around, and after realizing that her real life friends were uninterested in hearing her gush about Aamir, Preity and Rani, she started a blog. The 30-year-old librarian now spends her limited free time reading about her latest interest and watching large amounts of deliciously, over-the-top Indian films. She guest blogs today about the ever whittling waistlines of Bollywood actresses.
I began watching Bollywood movies about 10 years ago. Amidst the colorful songs and costumes and dramatic storylines, I began to realize something else that appealed to me about these movies – the actresses were all of normal and healthy weights. By “normal weight,” I don’t mean Hollywood normal, I mean real life normal. From Madhuri Dixit, whose ample thighs supported her beautiful dancing to Kajol’s sturdy tomboyish frame to Karishma Kapoor’s gawky slimness, the actresses all appeared healthy and well nourished. Being beautiful included a variety of different weights and shapes and sizes, rather than a single hard-to-achieve standard.
Yet, something disturbing has happened over the last few years, the variety is disappearing and in its place has taken root something very familiar – the new global standard of beauty.
Skinny and gym-toned is the new ideal body of Bollywood, and with it comes a whole host of problems that should be familiar to Hollywood-watchers. Actresses fainting on set; mysterious nosebleeds; and, perhaps most importantly, the turning over of actresses bodies to public scrutiny to be scolded for weight gain and praised for weight loss. It’s incredibly heartbreaking to see this happen over such a short period of time.
What’s even more amazing is that Bollywood is, so far, the only Indian movie industry to be embracing the global thinness ideal. The south Indian industries continue to cast actresses of all shapes and sizes in leading lady roles and the public continues to find them all attractive – thin and heavy. There is something different happening in Bollywood that not nation-wide and that thing is Western Influence.
One important thing to understand about India is that there is no unified India. India is built of a confederation of smaller states, each of which has its own language and cultural attitudes. Hindi, the language of the Bollywood film industry, is the language of much of Northern India – which includes New Delhi, the capital. While Bollywood likes to think of itself as the National Film Industry and of Hindi as the National Language, the truth is a lot more complex and regional film industries are often much more powerful than Bollywood in their markets. So, despite the heavy presence of western companies in places like Bangalore, where they speak Kannada, the native attitudes towards beauty in these regional markets remain the same as always. (And that’s not to say that they are perfect, either. To keep things in perspective, remember that India does a huge trade in things like skin whitening creams every year.)
So, where is this western influence coming in? One explanation is that growing power of the NRI (Non Resident Indian) market. Living in places like South Africa, Australia, the UK, and the States, the NRI market is making up a bigger and bigger piece of the Bollywood revenues and for better or worse they tend to share the same attitudes towards weight as their countries of residence.
Part of it could be the growing influence of Hollywood on the beauty ideals of Bollywood industry people. I saw a lot of this in the press after the Oscar win of Slumdog Millionaire, this idea that Bollywood was in competition with Hollywood or that they needed to “catch up” to the slick looking Hollywood films, which includes scantily clad and skeletal young women.
Whatever the explanation, there is no mistaking this perfect storm of factors has led to a whole new generation of Bollywood actresses. With the exception of a few actresses who were ‘grandfathered in’ by having a famous mother or father (sort like Drew Barymore), more and more actresses are being taken directly from the modeling runways and Miss India lineups. Talented but not model-weight actresses like Vidya Balan, who even just 5 years ago when she made her debut in Parineeta was considered strikingly beautiful, are now considered too hefty for mainstream work.
And yet, strangely enough, I still get the feeling that this size zero obsession has not yet caught on with the masses. While the high society starlets are showing off their flat stomachs, the decidedly healthy looking Ayesha Takia had a huge hit with the film Wanted, which was aimed directly at the masses. (it bombed in the NRI market.) And nobody staged walkouts because Ms. Takia’s stomach wasn’t perfectly toned.
Sridevi (left), a big star in the 90s, was known for her voluptuous figure.
Actress Namitha (right), is currently working in South Indian films.
If you google “Namitha” and “sexy” you get a ton of hits. She would
NEVER be hired in Bollywood today.
Bollywood actress Deepika “Size Zero” Padukone is one of the recent
crop of model/actresses who fit right in with the Hollywood beauty aesthetic
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