Making a statement with skin and bones
Fashion
By Laika Jain

AT one time, Raja Ravi Varma’s painting of a voluptuous Shakuntala epitomised feminine beauty in India. Buxom beauties like Madhubala and Asha Parekh represented this ideal on the silver screen. Later, Sridevi’s famous "thunder thighs" carried this fantasy even further.

Today, the generously endowed Indian woman is doing a rethink on her figure. With reed-like silhouttes turning fashionable, the race to be thin and thinner has crossed all barriers of age and profession — from 16 to 60, from housewife to high-flying executives, every body wants to be slim.

For such a woman, food is only to be monitored, not enjoyed. Salads are the only things that bring her closest to ethereal bliss. And should she, per chance indulge in sweet nothings, she punishes herself with a few extra hours at the neighbourhood gym.

"It’s trendy to be thin," observes Mary Ann Bhardwaj, a cosmetologist working with a slimming centre in Bombay. "A lot of them are already thin, but they are still unhappy. Hips and thighs are problem areas and they all want the inches off even though there are no inches in spare."

Indeed, slimming centres have to handle more psychological problems than physical. "We have to put them through intense counselling so that they feel better about themselves," says Suman Chadha, a gynaecologist who examines women before enrolling them in a health club.

But with men bringing their wives in and even children, getting their mothers, the anorexic wave has reached maniacal proportions. "They come with a specific weight in mind and demand that they be made to lose the requiredweight to reach that target," says Bhardwaj.

What remains unsaid in these situations is that the Indian woman has decided her body must somehow or the other, be a clone of her western counterpart. That she is built differently with a wider bone structure is apparently, of no consequence.

So there’s a 15-year-old Anita Menon (name changed) who wouldn’t mind coughing up Rs 1,000 to shed an extra kilo. Images of skinny European models, which bombard her impressionable mind every day on satellite television and magazines, have left her unhappy about her body.

After two months at the slimming clinic, when she looks into the mirror, all she sees are the inches disappearing off her already-too-skinny thighs. She doesn’t see the glow and freshness of youth wiped off her face or the pale, sickly girl going way below what her natural bodyweight.

"These girls come to me in a very depressed state and without any self-esteem because they think they are over-weight and that their boy-friends or husbands do not like them any longer," explains Chadha.

Observes Malkit Law, a general practitioner: "People aren’t enjoying life any more. Women are only talking about salads, starvation diets, health farms and anything else that indicates how much weight they are losing".

One very popular point of reference is a health farm in Bangalore where reportedly people are kept alive on gallons of lime juice. "Once out of the place, they regain their weight as they go back to their normal eating habits," says Law.

Twentyseven-year-old Smita Gupta joined one such health farm barely three months before her marriage, little realising the risks of being dangerously below her natural weight. She suffered two miscarriages and now refuses to conceive again even as her marriage is in peril.

Says fashion designer Ravi Bajaj: "Women don’t seem to think beyond their vital statistics. It’s good to be aware of your body, but this obsession towards remaining in shape has become so unrealistic that they are going overboard with the fitness thing."

Bajaj is however, happy that more and more women are fitting into his clothes. "Ihave always made tailored clothes for slim women. Now with thinner women around, business is booming. Everybody wants to "look like that model in that ad’."

"The Indian woman today has an active lifestyle, healthy eating habits and is exposed to what is happening in the West," says Bhardwaj. "Consequently, she is very body-conscious and even over-weight grandmothers are anxious to get into shape."

Significantly, for many lucky young women these days, the genes for hefty hips and thunder thighs are already getting lost and they are saved from inheriting mothers’ legacy. They are the ones who are prancing about in fashionable hipsters, skin-tight jeans and long, pencil skirts. — MF