Booty call

A well-rounded derrière is all the rage abroad; so when will India catch up with the trend?

"Does my bum look big in this?" We've all asked this question of our significant other at one time or another. And if we have trained them well, they always reply without missing a beat (or even looking butt-wards), "Oh no, it doesn't!"

Well, apparently, this is no longer the right answer. In a pop culture that venerates the lush behinds of Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj, which worships at the shrine of the Kim Kardardhian butt, and marvels at the well-aerobicized roundness of Michelle Obama's booty, the big bum is where it's at.

A skinny arse no longer cuts it, no matter how shapely or well contoured it is. You need more meat on your behind if you want to be seen as sexy and desirable.

If you want or get all philosophical (or do I mean sociological? Who the hell knows!) about it, the triumph of the big butt signals the mainstreaming of Black and Latino culture in the West. A generously-proportioned, well-rounded derriere, that curves out to make that much-admired S-shape is the golden standard in places as far apart as Brazil and the Bronx.

So much so that butt implants, where a silicon gel implant is inserted beneath the gluteus maximus (the bum muscle, in layman's terms), have become all the rage in South America, where you apparently lose your bikini-wearing rights unless the thong rests between two large, firm globes. Those who want to go natural, get their own fat (harvested from the thigh or belly) injected into their posterior to give it a nice, rounded shape.

The popularity of this procedure has hit now Europe and North America as well, though the ideal aspired to is more Gisele (Bundchen) than Jennifer (Lopez). But either way, the goal is the same: to fill out a pair of jeans nicely.

For some reason, though, bootylicious behinds are yet to catch on in India. Which is kind of strange given that we were the ones to fetishise voluptuous figures to begin with. Remember Vyjanthimala, all dancing eyes and swaying behind, as she grooved to such songs as Ab aage teri marzi in Devdas. Or even Asha Parekh, whose generous butt spawned a million jokes (sample: Asha Parekh goes to a temple and says, "Bhagwaan, main aap ke saamney ek bahut chhoti si aas ley key aayein hoon.")

Oh, how we laughed! Though it now turns out that the joke was on us. According to industry insiders of that era, Parekh actually had a standard-issue 'aas' which was padded out generously to create the desired silhouette of the day, so that she could stand up to the likes of the naturally-bountiful Padmini, another scorcher of that era.

This ideal of feminine beauty endured right into the Bollywood of the 70s, 80s and even 90s. Whether it was Zeenat Aman or Parveen Babi, Hema Malini or Neetu Singh, Madhuri Dixit or Sridevi, Hindi film heroines were drawn on generous lines. Their flowing maxi-dresses and chiffon saris drew maximum attention to their curves. And the obligatory ‘rain dance’ (remember Sridevi in Mr India?) added a certain frisson to the mix.

But those days of beauty and the booty are long over. Bollywood actresses today sport washboard abs not generous butts. Whether it is Kareena Kapoor or Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra or Deepika Padukone, they are all slim and slender. The only one who kind of bucks the trend is Vidya Balan. And it is telling that her biggest hit in recent times was Dirty Picture in which she plays a 80s bombshell, loosely modeled on the late Silk Smitha. (Though, to be fair, Southern Indian heroines still tend to be built on more voluptuous lines even today, though their proportions have been dampened down somewhat.)

In our popular culture (and sadly, that basically translates as Bollywood) the Cult of the Big Butt has singularly failed in making an impact. I’ve thought long and hard to come up with the names of our own bootylicious celebrities, and the only one that comes to mind is Malaika Arora, whose butt is such a kick-ass performer in such song sequences as Chaiyya chaiyya and Munni badnaam hui that it deserves star billing on its own. 

If you look beyond Arora, however, all you see is an arid landscape of impossibly-small behinds, all tight and taut with the effort of doing a thousand squats a day. Our reigning stars – be they in the movies, on television, or in the music and modeling world – are all whittled down to bare bones through a combination of diet, exercise and a little light liposuction. There isn’t an average-size butt in sight, let alone a truly bootylicious behind.

And that’s a pity, if you ask me. The natural body shape of most Indian women has always been curvaceous (just look at the sculptures at Ajanta and Ellora or even Khajuraho to see what kind of idealized body shape we worshipped) and will always remain so. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could embrace it, in all its voluptuous excess, instead of starving ourselves to conform to some outdated standard of Western beauty?

Maybe it is time that the Kareena Kapoors and Sonakshi Sinhas of our world took a cue from the likes of Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez, and reveled in their natural body types. I know that we’ve all been told that size doesn’t matter, but there are times when big is beautiful. And bigger is even better.

Picture perfect

We all like to exert control over our image, so why blame celebrities for their love of air-brushing?

It seems to be an immutable rule of this Internet age that if there is an embarrassing photo (or video) lurking some place in the virtual world, someone somewhere will find a way to leak it. And it is just as inevitable that these photos (or videos) will go ‘viral’; as in people all over the world will be clicking on them to view what was most certainly not meant for our eyes. Then, the chatter on social media will swirl out of control as everyone with a smartphone tries to out-smart the next guy with his one-liners. Columnists like myself will tut-tut about what voyeurs we have become (after taking a good look at the photos/videos, obviously; it’s research, don’t you know?). And then, we will move on effortlessly to the next such ‘scandal’.

And so, after Jennifer Lawrence – whose naked pictures, which she sent to her then-boyfriend, went spectacularly viral a few months ago – it was the turn of Cindy Crawford and Beyonce to suffer the ignominy of a ‘leak’ last week. And to add insult to considerable injury, unlike Jennifer who looked like a Greek goddess in her naked selfies, Cindy and Beyonce looked nothing like their usual selves in the photos that have probably been viewed a few billion times over by now.

Actually, that’s not quite true. Let’s put it this way, instead. Cindy and Beyonce looked exactly like their usual selves – but without the benefit of photo-shopping, air-brushing and sundry other techniques that glossy magazines and advertising agencies use to make women look picture perfect. So, like any other 48-year-old mother of two, Cindy – posing in black lingerie, fur coat and stylish hat – had a few stretch marks along her stomach while her thighs had a faint suggestion of cellulite to them. But that was nothing compared to poor old Bey, who had to contend with photos that showed a crop of acne under heavily-pancaked skin.

So far, so normal. That is what women look like, once they have lived a little (and pushed out a sprog or two). And acne could strike any of us any time (though it usually does just before an important party or, yes, a photo-shoot). So, what was the big deal about these photos being leaked on the net? Nothing at all, really.

And yet, when I looked at the pictures I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the subjects. It is one thing to voluntarily release unflattering (relatively, of course, these ladies couldn’t look anything but gorgeous if they tried) photographs of yourself, either with a view to showing the world that nobody is as flawless as their public personas may suggest or to help other women who are struggling against the tyranny of perfection. But it is quite another to have such pictures released without your consent or even your knowledge, to have the control you exerted over your image for decades wrested away in a matter of seconds.

It is brave to release images of yourself to show the reality behind those glamour pictures that infest the media. But it is a violation to have pictures that show the ‘real’ you – or, for that matter, any pictures at all – released without your permission.

This is as true of celebrities as it is of ordinary folk like you and me. Which of us can say, hand to heart, that we haven’t done a bit of ‘work’ on pictures before posting them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever other social media site we use? We all delete unflattering pictures the moment after they are taken. We all use photo-shopping and airbrushing apps to the extent our skills allow. And rare is the picture that makes the cut without the judicious application of a filter or two. If a friend or family member tags us with an unflattering picture, we untag ourselves immediately and then harangue them to take the picture down (NOW, if you please!). And if they don’t, unpleasantness usually follows.

That’s the kind of control we exert on our image in the public domain. And that’s when we are not even public figures.

So, if we feel betrayed when ‘unauthorized’ pictures of us make it to social media, how do you think celebrities like Cindy Crawford and Beyonce – whose careers are predicated, in whole and in part, on how they look – feel when their un-retouched images are released and become the subject of public debate.

The truth is that none of us is happy to show her real face to the world. We don’t leave the house unless we have our ‘face’ on; the one we display to the world, with the help of concealers, eyeliners, lipstick, and maybe just the lightest touch of foundation. We bleach, we wax, we tweeze, we pluck, in an effort to improve on Nature’s work. Some of us even go so far as to use Botox, fillers, and other cosmetic procedures to keep the ravages of age at bay.

Nobody looks as good as they do in their Facebook profile pictures of their Twitter DPs (or indeed, in their column pictures!). And that’s fine. It is our inalienable right to present our best faces to the world. And each of us has the right to control our own image, both in the private and public domain.

So, why deny Cindy and Beyonce the control that we take for granted?

Like a boss

Why ban the word ‘bossy’ when you can own it?

So, Sheryl Sandberg doesn’t like the word ‘bossy’. The Facebook COO explained why in an op-ed piece she recently co-authored with Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chavez for the Wall Street Journal. The word ‘bossy’, she wrote, is used disparagingly to describe girls who exhibit leadership qualities, while the boys who lead are described as ‘strong’ and ‘determined’.

Sandberg herself grew up being called ‘bossy’ and the use of that adjective made her feel bad about herself. So, she is now using the might of her non-profit organization Leanin.org to push for a ban on the use of that word so that girls like her can grow up feeling better about themselves.

To put her message out to the world, Sandberg also recorded a video starring such female role models as Condoleezza Rice, Diane Von Furstenberg, Jennifer Garner and Jane Lynch. This public service announcement ends with musical megastar Beyonce staring into camera and saying, “I’m not bossy. I am the boss.”

Well, in that case, just what is so wrong about being called ‘bossy’? All it really means is ‘like a boss’. So, why treat it like a dirty word? You can bet that if young boys were called ‘bossy’ they would wear the label like a badge of pride and not treat it like an insult. Why should young girls, then, treat it as some of sort of slur?

Words do matter. But what matters more is what we make of them. Treat the word ‘bossy’ as if it was an insult and soon it will come to mean just that. Accept it as a compliment and it will soon become one.

There is this one episode in Friends that comes to mind. Monica is complaining to Pheobe about how her mother makes her feel bad about herself. Every time I do something wrong, she explains, my mother calls it ‘pulling a Monica’. Well, why don’t you change that, asks Pheobe. The next time you do something right, call that ‘pulling a Monica’.

That’s exactly what we should be doing with words like ‘bossy’. We should be embracing them as something positive, a validation of our leadership skills, rather than a negative comment on our assertiveness.

Sandberg clearly doesn’t see it that way. For her and Rachel Thomas, co-founder of Leanin.org, the use of the word signals the beginning of a slippery slope. “We too were called bossy as girls,” they write, “Decades later, the word still stings and we remember the sentiments it evoked: Keep your voice down. Don’t raise your hand. Don’t take the lead. If you do, people won’t like you…As girls become women, the childhood b-word – bossy – is replaced by the b-word adult women face – along with aggressive, angry and too ambitious. The words change but their impact doesn’t. Women are less well liked when they lead, and all of us are affected.”

Aha, see, right there is the problem. And it’s not the word ‘bossy’. It is the fact that women want to be ‘liked when they lead’. Men, on the other hand, don’t give a damn about how much they are liked or disliked so long as they get to lead. And that, in itself, gives them an enormous advantage over their female counterparts. On one hand, you have a gender that has a take-no-prisoners attitude when it comes to wielding power. On the other, or so Sandberg would have us believe, is a gender that is so fragile that just the use of a single adjective is enough to make its members curl up and die.

It is this sub-text that I find truly troubling: that even powerful, successful, ambitious achievers like Sheryl Sandberg feel the need to treat young girls like fragile flowers who must be protected from the hails and storms of a misogynistic world. And the belief that women are somehow still wary of taking the lead on things because they fear being seen as less feminine and more of a threat.

The only thing that gives me cause for optimism is that I suspect little girls are not half as fragile as Sandberg seems to think. Well, let’s take Sandberg’s own case. She tells us that she grew up being called bossy, and those memories still hurt. And maybe they do. But take a good look at her now: the little girl who grew up being called ‘bossy’ is the woman who’s now the big boss at Facebook. So, what harm did that b-word do to her? None, as far as I can see.

I suppose this is where I confess that I grew up being called ‘bossy’ as well. And, truth be told, I still have the b-word thrown at me by most of my friends and family. Does it hurt? Not a bit. Would I like it banned? Not a chance. I would much rather own it.

Cut and (blow)dry

Why do women have such a complicated relationship with their hair?

It says something about Beyonce’s superstar status that even so mundane a thing as getting a new – albeit drastic – haircut sparks off a worldwide debate. It began when the singer posted a picture on Instagram, premiering her new gamine crop. Gone were the flowing, teased into curls, golden tresses. In their place was a punishingly short pixie haircut that perfectly set off her sculpted cheekbones and taut jawline.

With a certain predictability, the social media universe went into meltdown, with fans debating the merits and demerits of the new hairstyle on Twitter, Facebook and the many, many fan sites dedicated to the singer. Well, everything Beyonce does creates a media storm, so why should her hairstyle choices be any different?

But the flurry of ‘Beyonce chops off hair; what does it mean?’ stories just reminded me once again just how complicated the relationship between a woman and her hair is. Nothing a woman does to her hair is ever simple. How can it be, when we are forever looking for meaning in it?

Is she tiring of her sex symbol status and wants to try out a more demure avatar? Is this a sign of her reconnecting with her masculine side? Or more mundanely, does this mean that short, gamine crops are now ‘in’ and long, flowing hair is just a little bit dated?

Well, I am guessing that for a while at least, the short crop will become the trendy choice. I am old enough to remember just what a rage the ‘Rachel’ was (with Friends fans queuing up at hair salons with photographs of Jennifer Aniston to get the same layered bob; imagine their disappointment later when Aniston confessed that she had, in fact, hated the cut). And back home in India, we still call a style that involves a short ‘fringe’ or ‘bangs’ the Sadhana cut, after the 60s actress who first popularized it.

So, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if chopping off all your hair and going really short became known as ‘doing a Beyonce’. Well, it would be way better than ‘doing a Britney’; remember Spears’ slightly crazy phase a few years back when she shaved off all hair and emerged from the salon with a completely bald pate?

But even if you exclude spectacular breakdowns like Britney’s, hair is still a good way to gauge a woman’s mood. If it looks glossy and well-cared-for, then the odds are that she is a good place. If it looks limp, dirty of unkempt, then she is probably not feeling too happy (though that bad mood may just be down to the fact that she is having a bad hair day).

And then, there is the stereotyping that all of us are guilty of at one level or another. If she wears her hair in a demure bun, she must be a behenji. That one with the purple highlights in her hair; keep her away from your sons. Short, cropped hair with not so much as a whiff of hair gel? Must be a lesbian. Long, impeccably blow-dried hair? Has to be a vain, self-obsessed, lady-who-lunches with way too much time on her hands. Oh yes, there is stereotype to go with every hairstyle.

Speaking for myself, I can chart the various phases of my life by the way my hair looked during that period. The pig-tails and braids mark the decorous schoolgirl; the long, swishy hair left open to tumble down the back are a reminder of college days and a new-found freedom; that very unfortunate perm is a reminder of my callow youth. The shorter, layered style celebrated the beginning of my professional life; the gamine crop that followed was me trying out a new persona; and the blunt bob that I sport to this day marks the moment when I truly became comfortable in my skin.

Yes, you wouldn’t think to look at it, but hair is often telling us the story of a woman’s life. The moment of teenage rebellion when she chops off the long hair her mother has spent years oiling and braiding; the drastic change in colour or style that marks the end of a long relationship; the decision to eschew hair dye and embrace the grey as a mark of the inevitable passage of years.

Ah yes, to dye or not to dye: that’s the nagging question that most of my contemporaries are dealing with right now. And the only shades of grey in this debate lie in the roots of our hair; otherwise it is all very black and white. The no-dye lobby insists that this is the way to grow old: gracefully, with dignity, and with every white root on display. The dye-hard brigade scoffs at this defeatist attitude and promises that it is not going down without a fight (and some lovely highlights for good measure). Good hair, they proclaim, is worth dyeing for.

As for me, I am not ready to go grey yet. Or abandon the safety net of my bob. Or even give up the extravagance of having my hair professionally blow-dried. Because, like most women of my acquaintance, my self-image is inextricably tied up with my hair.