Face Off

Grooming routines seem to be getting more extreme by the day; how does yours match up?

I am always intrigued by the grooming habits of the female characters on our TV shows and movies. They wake up with lashings of mascara in place and perfectly plumped-up lips, with a sheen that owes nothing to nature. Even when they are pottering around in the house, their lipstick is perfectly applied, their cheekbones are impeccably contoured and their hair is all swishy and shiny.

Every single time I sit down to watch one of these shows – Modern Family, Divorce, Life in Pieces, This Is Us, McMafia, to give you just a random sampling – I wonder if any woman in real life ever resorts to such extreme grooming within the confines of her own house, on a trip to the supermarket or pharmacy, or even while dropping off the kids at the school gates.

Well, if such women do exist, we clearly move in entirely different social circles. Most of my friends think that running a brush through their hair is a pretty big ask if they are not stepping out of the front door. A dash of lipstick and a slick of kajal is all it takes to make them ready to face the world. Mascara and eyeliner are only pulled out for big life events like an anniversary or birthday celebration. And only wedding parties merit full-on foundation and blush-on (yes, they still call it that).

My own grooming routine tends to vary depending on the kind of the day I am having. There are some things that I just do on auto-pilot, like slathering on sunblock after my shower. It doesn’t matter if I am going to spend the entire day writing at my desk. The sunblock still goes on, even though my face will never see the sun in the course of the day. Ditto, with my kohl pencil. It doesn’t matter that nobody other than me is going to see it; I still slash a thin line on my upper eyelids. Why do I bother, you ask? Well, it’s because my face looks naked to my own eye without it.

If I am headed out of the house, then a dab of concealer to hide my dark circles is mandatory. There have been occasions when I have forgotten to do so before leaving the house and been shocked at suddenly catching sight of myself in a mirror. So, I can only imagine what a fright I look to others on these occasions. That’s when those sunglasses come in handy, no matter what time of day it may be.

How much of an effort I make also depends on whom I am meeting. If I am having lunch or dinner with my low-maintenance girlfriends, then I don’t bother glamming up. I am quite happy to go along with their uniform of jeans and a shirt with just a dash of red lipstick to liven things up. But if I am meeting some of my more glamorous mates, then without even realizing it, I end up focusing a bit more on my own appearance, falling in line behind them with a professional blow-dry, a light dusting of powder over the tinted moisturizer, though I draw the line at mascara during the day.

Similarly, if I am meeting my husband’s male friends at dinner, I don’t really bother to dress up. But if any of the wives are also putting in an appearance, then I try a little harder. And that’s only because they do, and it seems faintly insulting to not make a similar effort when I meet them. So, that’s when I bestir myself to wear a nice sari, stick on a matching bindi, and even eschew my usual flats for a pair of heels.

Of late, however, I have noticed that there has been a significant uptick in grooming standards in the different worlds I inhabit. Women turn up for early morning flights with a full face of make-up, perfect manicures and pedicures and hair blow-dried to perfection. Wine dinners are awash with ladies who have had their maquillage applied by professionals, complete with false eyelashes and hair extensions. And weddings have gone mental, with everyone and her aunt going full-on Kim Kardashian with extreme contouring, glow-in-the-dark make-up, fake hair, fake lashes, and fake just about everything else.

I am not sure what exactly is going on here. Are we reverting to the 1950s when extreme grooming was expected of all women, both within and outside the house? Is the Stepford Wives model of dressing up being revived, incongruously enough, by younger women in the 21st century? Or else how do you explain the pains young women take these days over extreme depilation, with every stray hair on the body being attacked with every weapon at their disposal? Their obsession with exfoliation and moisturization, the twin pillars on which their beauty regime is built? Their insistence on a full face of make-up before they step out to face the world?

There is a reason why all those make-up tutorials on YouTube knock up so many hits. Extreme grooming is at an extreme high these days. So, maybe I shouldn’t be scoffing at all those actresses in the TV shows I watch. Maybe these ladies were just ahead of the curve, and now everyone else is busy playing catch-up.

57 channels and nothin’ on…

Why can’t Indian TV give us the equivalent of Homeland, Newsroom, Mad Men or Modern Family?

As you may have gathered from my occasional references to my TV-viewing habits, I am a big fan of TV shows. Offer me a choice between a Hollywood/Bollywood blockbuster and a box-set of the most recent TV series and I will always plump for the latter. And every single time I spend the evening feasting on the best Western television has to offer, I set off for bed wondering why we can't do anything half as good in India. 

Why is it that we don't have an indigenous Homeland, the cracker of a TV show that had the entire world on tenterhooks for its two-season run? Even President Barack Obama - who presumably knows a thing or two about tackling terrorism - is a fan, going so far as to invite Nick Brody (British actor Damian Lewis) to the White House for an official banquet. It's not as if we are starved of inspiration given the number of terrorist attacks that have pummeled us over the last decade or so. And yet, we don't have a single TV show that brings this alive on the small screen. The best we can do, apparently, is to have Anil Kapoor threaten a re-make of 24, the thrill-a-minute Jack Bauer series which has already run its course.

Then there's Newsroom, the Aaron Sorkin show about prime-time news programming. Despite a weak (and much too wordy) start it took off after a couple of episodes, bringing the dilemma of TV news networks home to us. How do you keep your news judgement and your integrity intact and still score in the ratings while competing with hysterical, jingoistic anchors who fall back on hype and sensationalism. This is a subject that is bound to resonate with Indian viewers given the amount of sound and fury on our prime-time news shows. And yet, there isn't a single Indian TV show that has strayed into this territory. Everyone is busy making saas-bahu serials, the tried-and-tested family melodramas that have become such a staple of entertainment programming.

But even family shows can pack a punch, as anyone who has ever watched Modern Family knows all too well. The show has wit, charm, and some of the best one-liners on offer. But it also offers us the portrait of a modern family, the jumble of trophy wife, stepfamilies, gay parents, adopted Asian baby, stay-at-home Alpha mom, klutzy dad, teenager going off the rails, nerd kids, which really shouldn't work but in some mad, out-of-control way, simply does. In its own laugh-out-loud funny way it gives us an insight into the changing landscape of American society.

And what do we have in India? Oh, we do family shows, all right. But what do they show us? A regressive, patriarchal world populated by large, joint families who live in big, imposing mansions, and spend all their time plotting and scheming against one another. The women wake up in the morning wearing full make-up, swan around in Kanjeevaram saris, brandishing their oversized mangulsutras to prove that they are truly ‘pativrata naris’. Their clothes, their jewellery, their lives, nothing has anything in common with us. It is almost as if these shows are set in a different era altogether.

Not that I have anything against different eras. I am a huge fan of Downton Abbey and Mad Men, both of which skillfully recreate a bygone world. In Downton Abbey you get the sense of a decaying Edwardian England in which the old certainties are crumbling quietly, leaving disquiet and anxiety in their wake. Mad Men evokes the New York of late 50s and early 60s, when the advertising men of Madison Avenue ruled the world and didn’t quite know how to cope with the incipient feminism in the air. Can you think of anything remotely like this on Indian TV? No, me neither. And more’s the pity.

Comfort zones

We all have our own, whether it is on the snugly sofa at home or between the pages of a favourite book...

As I grow older, I find myself turning into a creature of habit. I have the same breakfast no matter where in the world I am. I wear the same perfume, buying a new bottle when the old one looks like it will soon run empty. I shop at the same stores; I buy the same labels. I read the same authors, waiting impatiently for their next book to be out. I eat out at the same restaurants time and again; hell, I even order the same dishes.

I guess you could say that I seek comfort in the familiar. It could be the Greek salad at my favourite cafe, a staple of many lunch-times, with the sharp tang of onions off-setting the soothing creaminess of feta cheese. It could be the dog-eared copy of a favourite book, where the plot springs no surprises, the characters are like old friends, and the dialogues so familiar that I know the best lines by heart. It could the saggy old couch at home, that has long-since moulded itself to my contours. It could be re-runs of a favourite sitcom to rewind after a long day (though Friends has been replaced by Modern Family in my household).

In some ways, of course, this is a basic human instinct. From the time we are born, we seek out our comfort zone amid a forbidding, unfamiliar world. We first find it at our mothers’ breasts, her smell and touch providing us with a sense of security and well-being. As infants, we move on to being secure in the environs of our home, which is why being sent off to school is such a traumatic transition. And no matter how much we complain about school as we struggle with our homework, it is a wrench to leave the comfort zone it represents to move into college.

Comfort zones keep us feeling safe and secure. But sometimes they also make us fearful and timid, afraid of venturing forth from our shells to explore what the world has to offer.

We are afraid to leave jobs that we loath because there is a certain comfort factor in the familiarity they represent (rather the devil we know, we tell ourselves dourly). We are reluctant to end bad relationships because we fear being alone more than we hate being lonely. We stay in unhappy marriages because it is too scary to even contemplate the alternative.

Sometimes our reliance on comfort zones means that we miss out on a lot of what the world has to offer. I have friends who head back to the same holiday spot every summer with their kids, even though the world is littered with better beaches, more stunning mountains, and far more exciting cities. But they like the fact that they can walk around the streets without getting lost; that the waiters in the neighbourhood bistros know their kids by name and dote on them; that there is a certain familiarity to the surroundings.

I know how they feel. There was a phase in my life when I used to head to London every time I got some time off. I loved the idea of going back to familiar haunts: the perfume department at Liberty; the shoe section at Harvey Nichols; the lingerie section of Marks and Spencer. Every trip to London had the same rituals. A stop at Nicky Clarke to get a ruinously expensive haircut; a visit to a theatre to watch a play; a walk through Hyde Park; window-shopping on Bond Street; an orgy of book-buying at Waterstones.

That phase is now over. My bi-annual pilgrimage to my spiritual home, London, has been junked as I explore uncharted territory on my holidays. And thanks to my new-found taste for adventure – and my decision to venture out of my comfort zones – I have discovered the delights that the world has to offer. I have tracked lions in the African jungle; marvelled at the wonder that is the Great Barrier Reef of Australia; trekked up the heights of Machhu Pichu; taken a helicopter ride to a live volcano in New Zealand; bathed in the waters of a spewing geyser in Iceland. Okay, I’ll stop showing off now.

But my point is that however much we want to stay within the safety of our comfort zones, sometimes it makes sense to venture outside and see what else is out there.  It could be the small stuff: signing up for a salsa class instead of pounding away on the treadmill. Or it could be the big one: giving up on a dead-end relationship or a soul-sapping job in the hope of starting something new. Either way, sometimes it makes sense to leave the security of a comfort zone for the excitement of a new start. You really should try it sometimes.

The triumph of the older woman

It’s the season when the 30 and 40-pluses are crawling out of the woodwork – and not a moment too soon

As someone who grew up seeing Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit light up the large screen with their 1000-watt smiles, I must admit to taking a particular pride in their recent return to the limelight. While Madhuri made a slight misstep with the massively ill-judged Nach Le (which wasn’t as much comeback vehicle as a car crash waiting to happen) she has recovered lost ground with her mega-glamorous judging stint on Jhalak Dhikhhla Jaa. Certainly, more people tune in to see her work that old magic on the dance floor rather than watch the actual contestants.

And then, there’s Sridevi. What can you say about a woman who looks better today, at the cusp of 50, than she did during her 20s and 30s? (Except that she should patent her diet and exercise regime and flog it to make an absolute fortune.) An actress who can come back to the movies after a 15-year old hiatus and make us feel like she was never away? A star who doesn’t need a huge production house to bolster her chances, but has the confidence to take on a small, simple movie like English Vinglish, knowing that she can make it sparkle and shine with her own charisma?

There’s really not much to say, apart from ‘Welcome back’ and ‘What took you so long?’

But who knows, perhaps both Sridevi and Madhuri have judged the zeitgeist well. And that, in India at least, this is the exact right moment for the older woman to make her claim for a spot in the sun.

In the West, of course, women stars of a certain age have been flourishing for a while now. In Hollywood, Meryl Streep still rules, churning out hit after hit (Mamma Mia, It’s Complicated, Julie and Julia, The Iron Lady), and manages to exude a mature sex appeal even though she is now a venerable 63. This year, she won the Oscar for best lead actress for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher – and among the rivals who lost out to her were Glen Close, 64, nominated for playing a cross-dressing waiter in Albert Nobbs and Viola Davis, 46, nominated for her portrayal of an African-American maid The Help.

On American television, the most popular female comic star today is the 42-year-old Tina Fey, who created 30 Rock, based on her experiences as a part of Saturday Night Live, and plays the central character of Liz Lemon. The biggest global hit to come out of US network television in recent times is the series, Modern Family. And of its female stars, Julie Bowen (who won the Emmy this year for her role of harried mom-of-three Claire Dunphy) is 42, while the Colombian bombshell, Sofia Vergara, who plays her step-mother (and is gloriously pregnant in the latest season) turned 40 this year.

In fact, if you took a good look across the auditorium where the Emmy awards were being held, it was hard to spot an A-list actress who was under 30. The heavily-pregnant Claire Danes who went up to receive her award for lead actress in a drama series for Homeland is 33; Christina Hendricks who was nominated for Mad Men but lost out is 36; while the award for the best supporting actress in a drama series went to Downton Abbey’s Dame Maggie Smith, now a majestic 77. The biggest loser of the day was the 26-year-old Lena Dunham, whose comedy show, Girls, didn’t win a single gong – though she was memorably pictured naked on a toilet eating cake, in a comedy skit preceding the show.

On Indian television, too, the older woman seems to be coming into her own. Sakshi Tanwar, who is arguably the best-known female TV star after her lead roles in Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii and Bade Achhe Lagte Hain (now that Smriti Irani has abandoned acting for politics), is now just one year short of 40. The anchor of choice for reality shows, Mini Mathur, is 36. And on news TV as well, the biggest female stars are all well over 30: Sagarika Ghose of CNN-IBN is 47; Barkha Dutt of NDTV is 40; Nidhi Razdan, also of NDTV (clearly a very woman-friendly organisation), is 35.

Yes, the day of the teeny-bopper seems to be well and truly past. This is turning out to the era of the mature woman. A woman who has lived a little; a woman who has the wisdom of the years behind her; a woman who just gets better with age. A woman like Sridevi and Madhuri, who may be past the first flush of youth, but can still hold her own against the teenage sensations of today.

And if you ask me, it’s not a moment too soon.

Not without my kids

Have you ever forgotten about one of your children and left them behind? Well, the British Prime Minister did...

In one of my favourite episodes from the sitcom Modern Family (which is slowly taking the place of Friends in my life), Claire and Phil Dunphy are at a child psychologist’s clinic with their son Luke. Claire thinks he may have learning disabilities; Phil disagrees. The couple continue to argue as they head out, Luke trailing behind. And then, they get into their respective cars and drive off – leaving their son standing alone in the car park.

Worse is to follow. Each parent thinks Luke is with the other, so they go through the routine of their day not sparing as much as a thought for the abandoned boy. It’s only in the evening when they meet up at a family dinner that they realise that he is with neither of them. Just as they are berating themselves (and each other) a huge stretch limousine drives up and disgorges Luke. The enterprising youngster has managed to hitch a ride home.

Yes, I know, hilarious stuff, right? Well, so long as it is a sitcom, and no child is actually being endangered by being left all alone in the big, bad world, we all laugh (and shake our heads over the folly of the Dunphy clan). But when something like this happens in real life, it can get a bit hairy. Then, it’s all wildly beating hearts, sweaty palms and an imagination that runs away with you, as you think of the worst things that could happen to your child because of a momentary lapse on your part.

That’s probably how David and Samantha Cameron felt when they drove up to Chequers (the country house of the British Prime Minister) and discovered that they had left their eight-year-old daughter, Nancy, behind at the local pub, where they’d gone to have lunch with some friends.

Samantha had thought that Nancy had climbed into her father’s car, as he drove off accompanied by bodyguards. And David believed that she was in the second car, with her mother and her siblings. It was only when the two cars disgorged their cargo that the Camerons realised they were missing their eldest child.

Nancy had apparently wandered off to the loo while the party was leaving and that’s where she was discovered by the pub staff, who kept her entertained while David did a quick U-turn to pick her up.

No harm done. All’s well that ends well. Or any other cliché that you’d like to pull out and employ to describe the situation.

Of course, this being the Camerons and the British press being what it is, the parents were rapidly hauled over the coals for being so irresponsible as to ‘forget’ their daughter at the pub (though, in all fairness, they didn’t forget about her; they just thought she was with the other parent). David was advised to attend one of the parenting courses he is so keen on; Samantha was berated for not keeping all her children well within sight at all times; and there were those mandatory musings about how the social services would have been called in double quick if the parents had been working class ‘chavs’ rather than posh folk like the Camerons. And yes, the term Nancygate cropped up in news reports soon enough.

But while this was, no doubt, an honest mistake that the Camerons won’t be repeating any time soon, it does make one think about the British Prime Minister’s security detail. It’s one thing for harried parents to miss one child out of three. But quite another for a Scotland Yard close protection team to miss the fact that a child of the PM was unaccounted for as long as 15 minutes. Thankfully, Nancy remained safe – but the alternative really doesn’t bear thinking about. (And I do hope that some heads have rolled as a consequence.)

Though the rules must be different for David Cameron and his family – who are high value targets for any terrorist group – this is a situation that any overworked, harried parent can identify with. Victoria Beckham, for instance, famously confessed to a similar lapse soon after the birth of her daughter, Harper. All set for the school run, Victoria buckled Harper into her car seat, got behind the wheel and drove off to drop son Brooklyn to his school. It was only when she was half-way there that she realised that Brooklyn was not, in fact, in the car.

And for all those hemming and hawing about the Camerons and their irresponsible parenting, here’s an interesting statistic. According to an online poll conducted by The Daily Telegraph, a little over 33.8 per cent of parents have forgotten and left a child behind on one occasion or the other. And while some put it down to momentary forgetfulness there are many who – like the Dunphys and Camerons – did so in the belief that the child was safe with the other parent. This kind of stuff is really more common than you think.

So, if anything, this incident just shores up David Cameron’s credentials as a regular bloke. Now, his security detail – they’re a bit of a disgrace to their service, aren’t they?

Sob story

There’s nothing quite as cathartic as a good cry, is there?

Tears. They’re a tricky business. Keep them all bottled up and you risk being seen as a heartless so-and-so. Turn them on whenever you feel overwhelmed and you are in danger of being dismissed as an emotional wreck.

You can see tears in a hundred different ways. They are the mark of a sensitive soul. They are a sign of emotional incontinence. They are the weapon of last resort for women. They turn men into helpless puddles of contrition. They are a sign of weakness, the preserve of those who don’t know how to keep their feelings under control.

Oh, and did I mention that men aren’t supposed to spill them at all. No, never ever. That is not the ‘manly’ thing to do. It doesn’t matter if their feelings are hurt or their knees badly scraped. Boys are not meant to cry unless they want to be asked, “What are you? A girl?”

Well, what can I say? I am a girl and have the tear-stained handkerchiefs to prove it.

I have to admit it doesn’t take much to make me cry. I well up whenever I am singing the national anthem. I get all teary watching soppy rom-coms like Sleepless in Seattle. I cry with laughter while catching up with the new season of Modern Family. I blub when I hear a particularly moving bhajan. A beautiful painting or a perfect sunset can move me to tears. The spectacle of Barack Obama being sworn in as the first African-American President of the United States had me sobbing on my couch.

My tears are very versatile. They can express almost every emotion across the spectrum: anger, frustration, sorrow, joy, love. Which, I concede, can sometimes get a bit overwhelming for people who are trying to figure out why I am welling up all over again.

To be honest, though, sometimes I don’t quite understand the process myself either. Why is it that I can sit through a regular tear-jerker of a Hindi movie and find myself completely unmoved? And yet, the sight of a man sitting down to a lonely dinner on a table set for one on a TV show makes me feel all weepy? Go figure; I certainly can’t.

In fact, sometimes the smallest, most insignificant thing, can set off the tears. The wizened face of a grandmother as she holds the hand of her granddaughter and helps her cross the street (or is it the other way round?). The toothless grin of a baby. The strains of a long-forgotten song.

Hell, on one embarrassing occasion, I even had tears rolling down my cheeks because a bowl of chilli in a Washington restaurant wasn’t quite as I remembered it. Yes, I know, it’s silly beyond belief; but there you have it.

But whatever the reason for their appearance, my tears are invariably cathartic. As the cliché goes, there’s nothing quite like a good cry to make you feel better about yourself. There is a complete cleansing of emotions; an overhauling of your nervous system that leaves you feeling both light and exhausted, both wrung out and ready to take on the world.

The only problem is that crying gets a very bad rap these days – especially if you are a woman. If you are arguing with your boyfriend/husband and begin tearing up out of sheer frustration you will be accused of playing dirty. “Ah, here come the waterworks.” (Don’t bother explaining that you’re not crying on purpose; that you simply can’t help it. Nobody is going to believe you.)

And don’t even think of letting the tears flow when you are at work. Not unless you want to be dismissed as a hysterical, hormonal, pre-menstrual/menstrual/menopausal (choose any one that fits) cry baby. Just do the smart thing. Retreat to the ladies room whenever you feel your eyes welling and your chin beginning to tremble. Lock yourself in and let the tears flow. Then blow your nose, wash your face, re-apply your make-up and head out to face the world again.

Strangely enough, though, even as women are being marked down for being emotionally overwrought and teary, men are increasingly being applauded for being in touch with their emotions when they let a tear or two escape their eyes. Clearly, political correctness has come a full circle on this one.

Our hearts well up when we see our cricketing heroes like Yuvraj Singh and Sachin Tendulkar with tears flowing down their cheeks as they celebrate their World Cup victory. David Beckham’s confession that he gets all teary when he looks at his daughter, Harper Seven, is enough to make all of us go, “Aww, how sweet!”

But while I am all for men being in touch with their emotions and expressing them in a honest way (and what could be more honest than tears?) one part of me is a little scared that this may just open the floodgates. Remember that Friends episode when Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) finally gets her boyfriend Paul (Bruce Willis in a hilarious cameo) to open up and express his emotions? And then has to drop him because he simply won’t stop blubbering?

Well, none of us wants that now, do we?