Best foot forward

A flat-out refusal to heels is the way to go, ladies

What would you do if you turned up at work and were told to change out of your flat shoes and wear a pair that had a two-inch (at least) heel? Of course, if you are a man then the question doesn't apply because you would never be asked to do anything so silly in the first place. But if you are a woman and work, say, in a corporate office, a hotel, a restaurant or even an airline, would you accede to such a request because it was what was expected of female employees?

Would you trot off and find a pair with a heel and slip it on meekly? Or would you stand up for your right to wear any kind of shoe you bloody well like?

I only ask because a 27 year old called Nicola Thorp found herself in exactly this predicament when she reported for her temp job as a receptionist at the London office of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Her employment agency said that her flat shoes were unacceptable. She had to go off and buy a pair of shoes with heels at least two inches high and change into them. Thorp refused. So, the agency sent her home and refused to pay her for the day.

But while the rest of us would have vented on Twitter and called it a day, Thorp was made of sterner stuff. She launched a petition asking that it be made illegal to ask women to wear high heels at the workplace. In 48 hours the petition has chalked up 110,000 signatures, enough to get the subject debated in the House of Commons and a law passed so that no employer in the future can get away with such sexist demands of its female workforce.

Such strict grooming requirements are relatively rare in India. But a few years ago, when Delhi's new international airport opened, with its long walkways from check-in to boarding, I was appalled to see the female ground staff of one particular airline (which shall remain nameless) negotiating that distance on heels.

Why, I asked one young woman, was she wearing heels? Surely, flats made much more sense given that she probably chalked up 10 to 15 kilometers on a regular shift.

Yes, she agreed. But the uniform rules stated that female employees must wear heels, so she had no choice in the matter.

I was so appalled by this that I wrote a column the next week (Running in heels, Brunch, August 2010) about how unfair it was to discriminate against women employees in this manner. Men could go about their jobs in comfortable shoes, while the women had to teeter around on high heels. How was this fair?

A few months later, when I travelled by that airline again, I found that the ladies were in flats. The uniform rules had been changed. And while I wouldn't dream of claiming credit for that change, I would like to believe that my voice among the chorus of complaints mattered.

See, that's the problem. Too many of us are only too happy to follow the rule (unwritten or spelt out) that to look properly 'groomed' women must wear high heels. So much so that we have even conditioned ourselves to believe that we are not really ready to face the world until we have a pair of heels on to bolster both our height and our self-confidence.

Not that I am one to talk. I spent my entire 20s and my early 30s in heels even though there was no dress code that forced me to do so. I voluntarily embraced this world of pain, telling myself (and my aching feet) that this was what being a successful professional was all about: looking the part. It didn't help that I was short, so I needed the morale boost (quite literally) that high heels provided.

I, at least, had the excuse that I was short. But even my tall willowy friends embraced heels, simply because that was what you did. You wore heels to work and high heels to party because -- or so we were conditioned to believe -- that made us look more attractive.

It was only once I was comfortable in my own skin (and very uncomfortable in my heels) in my mid 30s that I finally had the confidence to vote with my feet and simply say no to heels. I stood tall enough in my own estimation. And I didn't care if I fell short of the beauty standards imposed on women across the world.

Today, I am happy to report that the rebellion against high heels is apace. Earlier this month Julia Roberts walked barefoot on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival. This was noteworthy because last year at Cannes some women had been turned away from the red carpet because they were wearing flats. The dress code, they were told sternly, specified heels.

Well, try telling that to Julia, guys! She couldn't give a hoot as she threw off her shoes and sashayed across the red carpet in bare feet, giving the proverbial finger to the powers-that-be at Cannes in the process.

At this point, I am sure that there are many women out there who are preparing to mail or tweet me about they feel more powerful, even more empowered, with their heels on. Okay, ladies, just drop me a line five years down the line when your backs are whacked and your bunions have set your feet aflame and tell me how powerful and empowered you feel now. And then, we'll talk.

Let them eat cake!

Teach your kids to treat food as a fun friend – not a mortal enemy

“No,” she said, turning away from the chocolate cake being sliced up to celebrate a friend’s birthday. “I can’t eat cake. I will get too fat.” She stopped for a second, looking stricken. “I think I already am,” she said sadly.

I would probably have thought nothing of this – my friends tend to say this sort of stuff every time we eat out – except that this young lady was all of six. Yes, six years old, and already full of self-loathing for her body and weighed down with an unhealthy relationship with food. And this, despite the fact that she was not in the slightest bit chubby (let alone fat). 

All of us present turned accusingly – as you do – towards her mother, unspoken rebukes all too apparent on our faces. She turned a bright red and stammered, “I really don’t know where she gets this from. I have never told her that she is fat. Or that she can’t eat cake.”

And you know what? I believe her. Knowing her as I do, I am pretty darn sure that she could never be so insensitive as to say such things to her daughter. And yet, that is the message that her daughter has picked up from her. 

Sometimes it’s really not about what you actually tell your children. It’s about how you behave around them. It’s about non-verbal clues that they pick up from hanging around you at the dinner table. When Mummy sticks to salad and soup for dinner because she has put on weight that tells her daughter two things. One, that it is not A Good Thing to put on weight. Fat is bad. Thin is good. And two, that food is the enemy. 

You probably know girls like this as well (yes, for some reason, it is mostly girls who fall prey to body dysmorphia). Children who have internalized the message that fat is bad and that – as Kate Moss so famously said – nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. 

How could they not? We live in a world that venerates skinniness as some sort of divine attribute. The media are awash with airbrushed picture-perfect images of thin women showing off their washboard stomachs and toned behinds. Film actresses and other female celebrities are routinely slagged off when they put on a few kilos, even if it is after a baby. 

Remember the bad press Aishwarya Rai Bachchan got when she arrived in Cannes carrying a bit of post-pregnancy weight? And the praise showered on her when she did her Cannes call last year, looking like her old svelte self? That is the kind of size-ist nonsense that passes off for media commentary these days.

There really is no way to protect our children from this stuff. It is all around them all the time. But to counteract that it falls upon mothers, much more so than fathers, to send out some positive messages. Because like it or not, girls are more at risk, and it’s their mothers they look to as they try to navigate the world.

So, for all the mothers of young girls out there, who want their daughters to grow up with a positive body image rather than eating disorders, here are some do’s and don’ts. 

• Don’t fetishize food. Don’t get into fad diets in which you give up entire food groups claiming an intolerance or a food allergy. The message you pass on your child is that food is the enemy.
• Instead, teach your daughter to treat food as a fun friend. Get her to help you in the kitchen, giving her age-appropriate tasks. Teach her how to lay the table. Make the dinner table a place of family conversation, laughter and the happiness of eating together; not a minefield which may blow up in your face if you end up mixing proteins and carbohydrates (no, I don’t know what that’s all about either). 
• Serve up healthy food by all means but don’t restrict your menu to exclude all ‘treats’. That just turns them into forbidden fruit, which – as we all know – becomes all the more attractive for being verboten. It makes much better sense to serve up the odd sugary treat or French fries so that they seem like just another food choice.
• If you must obsess about your weight, don’t do it within her earshot. She doesn’t need to know that you were ten kilos lighter before you had her. And how hard it is to get your pre-baby figure back. She thinks you look perfect anyway. Don’t tell her any different.
• Don’t compliment other women by saying how much weight they have lost or how thin they look. The subliminal messaging that goes through to your daughter is that losing weight is what matters. That you can never look good unless you are thin. And that starving yourself to achieve that goal is perfectly okay.
• Don’t ever use the word ‘diet’ within her hearing, even if you append it with the politically correct ‘healthy’. If you must, use the phrase ‘healthy eating’. Or better still, ‘healthy lifestyle’ which involves eating well, and getting enough exercise.
• Do tell her how lovely she looks. But never make it contingent on how much she weighs. Beauty does not lie in a particular shape or size; as the old saying goes, it lies in the eye of the beholder.

So, who’s sari now?

Why do Indian actresses make such a fetish of wearing gowns at international events?

Try as I might, I can’t understand why Deepika Padukone got such a bad rap for wearing a sari at the Cannes Film Festival. The sari itself was faultless, a tasteful creamy white affair with gold embroidery, designed for her by Rohit Bal, and worn daringly low on the waist to showcase her washboard stomach. The choli was a skimpy, shimmery little thing that made the most of her perfectly chiselled arms and shoulders. And the entire ensemble looked just about perfect on the tall, willowy Deepika. She looked sexy, elegant, dignified and sophisticated, all at the same time – a feat almost impossible to pull off on the red carpet.

Well, at least, that’s how it seemed to me. But given the kind of criticism her appearance attracted, mine was clearly a minority opinion. There were those who were unhappy with the choice of sari (too drab, too understated), others who found fault with the blouse (too short, it made her torso look abnormally long), her jewellery (she had worn it for another function earlier) and the hair-do (the prim bun made her look much older than her years). But mostly, the critics couldn’t understand why she had chosen to wear a sari when she had the perfect figure of carry off a gown.

Well, call me insular or just plain jingoistic, but the sight of an Indian actress walking the red carpet in Cannes wearing a sari made me feel rather proud. What a welcome change from the usual parade of Indian stars and starlets (i.e. everyone from Aishwarya Rao to Mallika Sherawat) who insist on wearing Western-style long, clinging gowns, slit to mid-thigh, and slashed low at the neck, whenever they attend any international event.

In the case of Aishwarya Rai, the oft-cited excuse is that she appears at Cannes in her capacity as L’Oreal ambassador and that the brand decides what she should wear. Hence, the sweeping, floor-length gowns, the elaborate up-dos for her hair, and the joint appearances with American celebrities like Eva Longoria.

But everyone thought that things would change with Freida Pinto, the unlikely star of Slumdog Millionaire. Here was a sweet little girl-next-door type who had gone international. And maybe she would take Indian style international with her. No such luck. Unlike Deepika, Freida chose Galliano over Gudda, wearing Dior at most of her red-carpet appearances and for fashion magazine covers.

But perhaps when you are trying to break into Hollywood, it makes sense to play down the exotic Indian angle and play up the international beauty bit. You need to show directors and producers that you can carry off a thoroughly modern look; and you can’t do that in an Indian outfit. Hence the recourse to such labels as Armani and Chanel and the refusal to wear a sari, I guess. (And it did work for Pinto, who was signed on for a Woody Allen film.)

But that’s exactly why I would award Deepika Padukone full marks for choosing the sari over a gown. I am sure that she wouldn’t be averse to a role or two in a Hollywood project either, but did she let that stop her from going all traditional on the Cannes red carpet? No way.

And how very nice it felt to see a young Indian girl taking pride in being Indian on an international platform! To see her walk the red carpet wearing a traditional sari in the traditional way and looking absolutely smashing in the bargain.

But perhaps this little vignette reveals a bit more than just Deepika’s wardrobe choices. Maybe it suggests that the Indian stars of this generation have finally found the chutzpah to be confident in their own costumes on the international stage. They no longer feel the need to fit it by wearing identikit gowns that you can’t tell apart from all the others on the red carpet.

They are now happy to be themselves, secure in their own skins and sexy in their own saris.

Sure, they want to conquer the world, but they want to do so on their own terms. They may want to go international; but they still want to look Indian while they do that.

Think about it. While Preity Zinta and Bipasha Basu choose to wear Western designs at film events even back home in India, the younger stars are falling back on the glamour of the sari. Kareena Kapoor has made the chiffon sari with halter-neck blouse her signature look. Priyanka Chopra is happy to repeat her ‘Desi girl’ style at all award functions. And now you have Deepika Padukone strutting her stuff in a sari in Cannes.

Yes, our Indian stars are still intent on conquering the world. But this time round, they are confident enough to do so dressed as Indians. How could that possibly not make you proud?