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Karan Johar was right in choosing him with the body women would die for. Twenty five-year-old Varun Dhawan dreamt of wrestling in the ring when destiny caught him and dipped him in the pool of stardom vis-`E0-vis Student of the Year. He is quite cool about showing off his sexy pecs and he did the groundwork live when he danced shirtless at the Zee Cine Awards. If these debut stars can do it, why can’t Ranbir Kapoor who bared his bottom in Saawariya?
But the groundwork was laid long back by Salman Khan, who loved to take his shirt off in every film. He has a long line of followers in John Abraham, Shahid Kapoor, Akshay Kumar, Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Sanjay Dutt, Saif Ali Khan and Hrithik Roshan. In fact, junior Roshan took his first lessons in body beautiful under Salman’s careful tutelage. The opposite sex loves to drool over these ‘eye-candy’ bodies and whistle in the audience. Girls no longer shy away from cat-calls and comments at muscled men walking by with their tennis rackets in sexy shorts. If this beautiful body is also attached to an intelligent brain and a chiselled face, it makes for more pulling power. A woman in a bikini is passé.
The price of vests for men with cutaway sleeves shot up after Salman Khan did a song-and-dance number with a body-mike strapped to his bare torso and gyrated as much as the Censors would allow in many films. Male membership in Mumbai gyms went up by the dozen every day, and the gym owners laughed all the way to the bank. Young guys in co-ed institutions started wearing shirts unbuttoned right down to the waist to expose their hairy chests. Quick-thinking fashion designers with designs on these silly males created the see-through shirt that left little to female imagination. Sanjay Dutt puffed up his lean body with steroids says the grapevine. Lo and behold, Dutt junior was back, in vest and jeans, playing the role of a mafia goon in umpteen films, making quite a few female hearts in the audience skip more than a beat — not with his face, nor with his acting, not either with his education, none of which amount to much, but with his rippling-muscled, bare body.
The Dhoom series of films projected the macho man image with the policeman, projecting the ‘nice-guy’ masculinity versus the ‘not-so-nice’ guy masculinity as seen in the character of the thieves, the first one solidifying the macho with the motorcycle, the second one exuding a different kind of macho masculinity through the many disguises picked carefully from fairy tales, Greek statues, etc. At the other end of the spectrum is the masculinity of Aamir Khan projected in Ghajini with his bare, eight-abs torso covered with words he could use to recall his immediate past. The history of Indian mainstream cinema reveals a wide variety of masculinities in the male protagonist of films, from God figures drawn from Hindu mythology to saints derived from the stories of saint poets; from swash-buckling, sword-swinging heroes whose aim is to rescue damsels in distress to the generous, kind-hearted, affectionate and self-sacrificing hero, who gives up his love for a greater cause. But all that has changed today. The ‘body beautiful’ wins the trophy and even Emraan Hashmi admits this!
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WHAT do Ranveer Singh,
Siddharth Malhotra, Varun Dhawan and Ranbir Kapoor have in common
other than the fact that they are hot, hep and sexy? Turn over girls,
the boys are coming and how! Ranveer Singh is flaunting a leaner frame
and chiselled abs for his forthcoming films — Ram Leela, Lootere and
Gunday. He came out of the swimming pool with his bare body in
full display in Student of the Year.
Never mind the dramatics he is famous
for in every film — from Rocket Singh: Businessman of the Year
to Barfi, we hear he hits the gym at 3 am for regular workouts
and plays football to keep fit! He is running the safety line since
his father, uncles and grandfather are famous for more than their
acting skills — their size!
Vidya Balan on and off screen, is a classic example that
an Indian woman can beat the busty Baywatch girls hollow by
redefining the term ‘hot’. Sridevi wears the sari right through
English-Vinglish but her sex appeal at 49 is hard to beat. But a
bare-bodied man with rippling muscles and a greasy chest is in.
The shortest way to a
young lady’s heart, they have now discovered, is through a man’s
biceps! This does not speak highly about the cerebral qualities of the
lady or the men but things are a-changing. The acronym of the
"angry young man" that was once the monopoly of the Big B
now belongs to someone else. But this time round, it bears a new
meaning in keeping with the role model who lives up to the label. The
message is loud and clear — romance is out, a sexy body is in.