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.

The art of the apology

It is much harder to master than you would think

I have never been a great fan of either Taylor Swift or Nicki Minaj. But even so, it was hard not to get drawn into their 'Twitter feud' given that it more or less 'broke the Internet' (kids these days, I tell ya!).

Disappointed by not getting a VMA award for Anaconda, Minaj tweeted about how "If your video celebrates women with very thin bodies, you will be nominated for vid(eo) of the year", adding later, "Black women influence pop culture so much but are rarely awarded for it". Swift thought this was an attack on her and responded angrily (on Twitter, where else?). Other celebrities weighed in on either side of the debate. Columns were duly penned standing up for either Swift or Minaj. So far, so normal.

But where the narrative veered off-track is in how the contretemps ended. A day or so later, Swift sent out a tweet: "I thought I was being called out. I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke. I'm sorry, Nicki." Minutes later, Nicki tweeted back, festooning her reply with little red heart emojis, "That means so much Taylor, thank you."

A misunderstanding. An exchange of barbs. A quick, heartfelt apology, quickly accepted with grace and affection. Don't you wish it always went like this? But the sad truth is that it hardly ever does - both in real life and on the Internet.  And that is because the art of the apology is the hardest ever to master.

Let's take a quick look at Swift's Twitter apology, a master of the genre. She began by explaining how she felt ("I thought I was being called out"). She went on accept how she went wrong ("I missed the point, I misunderstood, then misspoke"). And she ended with two simple words: "I'm sorry."

There was no attempt to dissemble or fudge, to evade responsibility, to lay blame on someone else, or to do that whole mealy-mouthed thing which involves 'regret' rather than an apology. Or even do that non-apology apology that always drives me up the wall and goes along the lines of: "I didn't do anything wrong. But if you think I did, well then I am sorry."

Instead, Taylor Swift accepted that she got it horribly wrong and said a straight-up sorry. And because there is nothing quite so disarming as a heartfelt apology, Nicki Minaj accepted it with equal grace. End of story.

If only all fights -- both in the real and virtual world -- ended this way. But alas, they seldom do. And that's because we seem to have lost the ability to apologise with sincerity and humility.

Instead, when we err, our first instinct is to dig our heels in and defend the indefensible. We insist that we were right all along and the other person is just a big baby who refuses to see reason. If that doesn't work, we fall back on detailing the many instances where the other person has hurt us, implying that he can't complain when he has been equally guilty in the past. When that fails too, then we try that age-old trick called escalation: calling the entire relationship into question just so that we can draw attention away from the one incident which we need to apologise for.

As the song goes, sorry does seem to be the hardest word. But if you are going to say it, then the least you can do is say it right (and, of course, mean it -- though that is not always mandatory!). So, here are the three golden rules to remember when making an apology

1) An apology should never include the word 'but' (as in: "I am sorry but you started this" or "But you do this all the time and I never complain"). If you have done something wrong, if you have hurt someone, or even angered them, then it doesn't matter what went before (or what comes after). You need to say sorry, no ifs and buts allowed.

2) An apology should never be conditional (as in: "If my words pained you then I am sorry that you are hurt"). This implies that it is actually the other person's fault for being so damn hypersensitive in the first place. And that you are so high-minded that you are apologising to make them feel better, even though it is quite clear that you are not at fault.

3) Once you have apologised/been apologised to and the apology has been accepted, treat the matter as closed. Don't bring up the subject again and again, especially when you are feeling aggrieved about something else entirely. Don't use the apology to make the other person feel small, either in private or in public. Turn the page. Close the chapter. And move on.