CHENNAI: Much before model Gigi Hadid and American fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger joined hands for an exciting sartorial collaboration, the latter had once propped Hadid on the ramp with a poncho because she wasn’t thin enough for their fitting ensembles.
Last month’s nail biting game between New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons wasn’t the biggest talking point of the Superbowl, as much as Lady Gaga’s tummy flab, becoming fodder for some rather unsavoury comments and memes. As recently as last week, fashion brand Zara thought they had played their cards right as they proudly unveiled their “love your curves” campaign for their denim line, albeit with slender women. Oh, the irony!
These are just a few times (out of the million) we got the idea of a ‘positive body image’ awfully wrong. A recent body image campaign, Love Every Body, by city-based actor Mallika Angela Chaudhuri and entrepreneur Roshni Hemdev discussed just that, with the launch of a calendar featuring models of all body types. However, what caught our eye were the questions this initiative posed, intended or otherwise, calling for a little introspection.
The concept of body image has, by and large, been linked to society’s perception of weight and the resulting rise or fall in our confidence levels. Fat shaming, as the jargon goes, has been the biggest area of discussion, with a call for sympathy for that tummy tyre. While celebrities world over have come out and spoken against the idea of a perfect body shape, according to which, no body is ever fully perfect, the ones who seemed to be unfazed by popular fads have steadily been sucked into the rut of ‘getting in shape for their characters’ (think actor Sonakshi Sinha).
“I’ve been heavy and lean depending on my characters. So I’ve been at the receiving end. Each body is special but we find ourselves obsessed with the infamous six-pack. Everyone’s shape is their beauty. Who defines what is imperfect?” says Jiiva, who was at the receiving end of a lot of flak for his weight in Siva Manasula Sakthi (2009).
Amitash Pradhan, who is now making headway in Hollywood, says that while the two film spheres are starkly different in their approach to different bodies, we are getting more progressive as we speak. “Look at the song Malhari (Bajirao Mastani, 2015). On one end, you have Ranveer with his oiled chest and abs and on the other, you have a heavy Ganesh Acharya, both competing with each other in terms of energy levels. This stigma around fat people is all a state of mind,” he adds. Well, ignorance is bliss it seems…at least in his case!
It’s hard to ignore cinema’s influence on body image, especially among adolescents. Remember the frenzy around Kareena Kapoor’s tiny waist in Tashan (2008)? The common perception of ‘thinner is fitter’ has its roots firmly seated in the soils of the Indian film industry. So much so that even the likes of the Malayalam film space, which has for ages celebrated women of all sizes, curvy ones particularly, found itself mocking Nazriya for her weight gain after marriage.
Fit people don’t have it any easier, and this goes beyond cinema. Anyone who makes frantic trips to the gym to either gain or lose weight will know that a lot of shaming begins there. Your bicep isn’t big enough; those abs need to be more chiselled, ‘who will marry you with that paunch’ are common supposedly well-meaning digs that fly across treadmills.
“Fitness is like faith, it’s a personal thing. It makes no sense to demean someone based on the way they choose to be,” says entrepreneur Sam Paul. Then again, not everyone aspiring for a great body can go around saying they prefer Jonah’s to Slam (Paul’s fitness chain) as nonchalantly as he does.
Roshni Hemdev, the Love Every Body’s campaign manager, however draws inspiration from her mother in her quest to break body stereotypes. “My mother was an entrepreneur who gave her male counterparts a run for their money. Women, and for that matter men too, are a lot more than just their bodies and no one deserves to have a weighing scale as a yardstick for success,” she avers.
How many times have you walked into a store and fallen in love with the dress, only to walk away crestfallen because your size wasn’t there? If Nike’s new plus-size offering is anything to go by, designers and brands world over have begun waking up to the reality of different body sizes. “If you have it, no matter what you have, flaunt it,” believes city-based designer Tina Vincent, known for her niche styling for the plus-sized female population.
Mallika Angela Chaudhuri concurs expressing her concern over the fact that plus-sized women hardly find fitting clothing, despite a sizeable portion of people in the country wear more size 14 and above. “Hiding behind loose shirts and kaftans, we tuck away a big part of who we are in the bargain,” she adds, drawing from her own experiences of rejection when she first entered the city’s theatre scene.
“Body shaming starts at home. When people tell you what to wear in accordance to what society deems good or bad, it’s a problem – a problem families and in a sense schools unwittingly take forward,” she rues.
Campaigns of this nature have come and gone, with little impact on how people on either end of the weight spectrum ultimately feel about themselves. The chinks are many on this armour of positivity, one being the slow metamorphosis of the body positive campaign to a slim-bashing slugfest.
“Some of us are just skinny; many of these campaigns have a lot to do with making those on the heavier side feel better at our expense,” says model Sahithya Jagannathan. ‘Flat like a TV’, ‘ghar pe khaaana nahin milta hai kya’ (don’t you get food at home) and the horrendous ‘You look like you have AIDs’ reflect just how little we know.
“The problem with these body positivity campaigns and our mindset as a society itself is that it’s not considered body shaming if you’re passing comments on thin people,” points out city-based cinematographer Danush Bhaskar. Popular stand-up comic Azeem Bannatwala summed it up perfectly drawing from his own experiences in his recent show in the city when he exclaimed, “Thin people are always going to made fun of because, in the end, what can we do...beat you up?”
Another glitch in these campaigns is the lack of true representation. Dove got it right portraying women of all sizes, tyres and stretch marks included, while campaigns, particularly in India seem to lack that quality. The need to mask imperfection is a sad reality, says Naveen Nandakumar of Irezumi. “Many people come to me to get tattoos to feel better about their bodies. As a tattoo artist, I find that really sad,” he observes.
Ace photographer G Venkat Ram shares that perspective. “No matter what we talk about body positivity, Photoshop still commands its usage. Technicians are as much to blame as the audiences are, as we cater to what they wish to see,” he points out, highlighting an uncomfortable undercurrent of general body image perceptions we hold today.
As we draw conclusions, heartening as it is to see that we are becoming more inclusive as a society to different bodies, we are often ourselves pitted against each other, reduced to mere shapes. It would be nice to have a change of perspective there, wouldn’t it?
(The writer is a freelance journalist)