When looks don’t matter
Shoma A. Chatterji

The film industry has always been partial to those with good looks. However, many average-looking actors have evolved into very famous and successful stars in their own right

The words ‘beautiful’ and ‘handsome’ are almost the exclusive monopoly of filmstars across the world. But if one takes a closer look, the not-so-beautiful and sometimes, even those who were quite 'plain' (read ugly) in looks have evolved into very famous and successful stars in their own right. So, next to a Dev Anand, we had a Dilip Kumar and next to the smashingly handsome Suresh, there was our very own Ashok Kumar. What then, is this thing called ‘beauty’ all about? How is it that conventionally handsome heroes like John Abraham and Dino Morea fall by the wayside as glittering stars on the Bollywood sky while the positively not good-looking-at-all Emraan Hashmi and Irrfan Khan are laughing all the way to the bank? Add to this list the extremely successful Ajay Devgn, midget-like actors like Rajpal Yadav and Tusshar Kapoor who are calling the shots and picking and choosing their assignments. Versatile Nawazuddin Siddiqui is the latest additions to this list.

Among the female stars, we have a long list of not-at-all-good-looking actresses pitted against truly beautiful ones. Suraiya was beautiful but Geeta Bali was not. Tanuja was beautiful but Nutan was not. Madhubala was beautiful but Meena Kumari (Baiju Bawra) was not. She evolved into a beautiful swan much later in history. The greatest example is Amitabh Bachchan, lanky, thin-to-a-point-of-being-gangly and ugly, was asked by a producer whose door he had knocked at, "thobda dekha hai aaine mein?" (Have you seen your face in the mirror?) He had not seen his face in the mirror yet went on to become the greatest star of all-time in Indian cinema. Amitabh Bachchan as the doctor in Anand and the same Bachchan in Deewar a few years later, with more flesh on his body and face, became the heart-throb across three generations of the Indian mass audience.

Hema Malini was beautiful but Rekha in her earliest films, was fat, dusky, had an Oriental slant to her eyes and looked ugly. Smita Patil was dark, extremely skinny and unattractive. But just look at the shape she took as an actress of great caliber along the lines of other plain-looking actresses like Jaya Bachchan and Shabana Azmi. One wondered what made B.R. Ishara pick an ugly girl like Reena Roy for his film Zaroorat. But much later, shaking a leg with Kamalahassan in a film, one was dumbstruck at the beauty she had become.

Does success change the way we look at people when they become successful and famous and popular? Or do these successful stars actually ‘become’ beautiful as they keep climbing the ladder of success and fame? Vidya Balan and Bipasha Basu, with Shah Rukh Khan to give them company, are two brilliant examples of stars who made it despite the fact that they were not blessed with God-gifted beauty like Madhuri Dixit or Katrina Kaif. But their careers have taken them where they wanted to be and the fact that they are holding their ground in a world filled with beautiful people shows that success vests its blessed ones with beauty all its own. Shilpa Shetty reportedly had a nose-job done while Sushmita Sen was rumoured to have gone through a breast implant while Anu Kapoor was quite candid about some cosmetic surgery done to his face. But none of them really needed all these cosmetic corrections to their natural looks because their grit, their talent and their hard work would have turned them into beautiful people any way.

Rice University Professor Mikki Hebi's research shows "how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview." Further, he found that "good-looking bosses were found to be more competent, collaborative and better delegators than their less attractive counterparts."

However, he forgets to note that one can easily change the way one’s face looks not through cosmetic surgery or artificial add-ons but only through success. "Beauty lies in the eyes of the observer" goes the age-old saying. If this be true, then hasn’t Shah Rukh Khan’s success made us interpret his looks differently?

Or Deepika Padukone, who is not beautiful in the conventional sense of the word but has acquired it with her grace, elegance and by the way she carries herself in screen and off-screen space.

The last word ought to go to Adam Eyre-Walker from the Centre for the Study of Evolution at the University of Sussex. He contends that the way we label ‘beautiful people’ and separate them from not-so-beautiful people is, perhaps, the influence of culture: "We are taught to look upon tall men and small women as desirable", he says. "So our preference for attractive people has been culturally created and not hard-wired in the human species." But the debate goes on forever.

HOME