Fat chance, did you say?
By Devashree Shivadekar
LOS ANGELES: Three years ago if you googled Aishwarya Rai’s name, it would have given you the following automated options associated with her name – Bachchan, Bollywood, Cannes. Now, post-maternity, search engines show an additional option for her, a word you never would have thought of, while thinking of a glamorous Bollywood actress, a top model, one of the most beautiful women to exist – according to Oprah Winfrey herself, a word so obsessed over in Bollywood and with women in general that it got a privilege of associating itself with a former Miss World: fat.
Is it just me or does the word have a certain hostility to it? Or is it just that we as a society are so insecure to accept anyone who does not fit (no pun intended) in the book of convenient rules created by the so-called rulers of entertainment?
Seriously though, leave Aishwarya Rai Bachchan alone. She isn’t here to fulfill your “media-forced, absurd-but-somehow-acceptable-because-the-women-brought-it-upon-themselves” fantasies. Why don’t you stop obsessing over her weight and go for a jog instead? What is it about being slightly over the industry standard weight that makes people (men and women) go in a mental frenzy? What is it about watching a normal sized woman on screen that brings out the embarrassment in women and the evil in men? Are we as a collective group of individuals binging on the media “diet” that engineers us to automatically despise that person?
Two years ago, when Mindy Kaling got her own show on American primetime television, she broke quite some records, figuratively speaking (get it?). Not only being a racial minority, but also “not fair,” not “stick thin” and not crying her eyes out over a man. That begs an obvious question – can we have our own Mindy Kaling and look beyond her looks (although Mindy is probably one of the prettiest Indian women to exist) and appreciate for what she is – a talented young writer/actress.
Yes, we do have actresses who have gained weight for a role and rocked it (Vidya Balan). And I do admire her for unapologetically embracing who she is and trying her best to make her audience see her talent, not her curves. And not just for a role, but in real life. But does that mean being stuck with roles that “require” being chubby? Or can we see her replacing Bipasha Basu in the next Jism (although let’s collectively hope we don’t have to see any more of those sequels). Can we effortlessly cast her alongside a hunk assuming (God forbid) he fell for a normal sized woman for once and chased her around instead of someone who never eats bread? Can our girl-next-door actually be the girl next door?
Recently a friend of mine in her late twenties confessed how she felt compelled to start losing weight because she’s in a marriageable age. And if she didn’t reach her ideal thin weight, chances were she would never find a husband. First of all, she looked fine to me. But that’s beside the point.
I feel like the female kind was abducted and sent back to earth with a chip implanted in their heads that said that skinny is the only acceptable size. And we slowly began to tumble as a human race when we, the women started following it blindly. If asked what men consider an ideal female, most women would pick a size that is smaller than their own. Many psychologists have proved it wrong, stating that men in fact do not prefer fashion-model bodies.
Allow me to get technical, because clearly this issue needs technicality squeezed into its wider, more elaborate frame of cognizance. A woman’s weight depends on several factor including height, fertility rate in relation to the age and body-mass index. I guess we don’t need to get technical after all (unless you actually cared about the statistics).
Point is, a distorted self-image perception still exists in Indian females, regardless of how they look. On every single matrimonial website in India, they ask to specify each and every detail of your physique – height, weight (petite to morbidly obese), eye color (eye color!), hair length, skin color (starting from fair to mud to wheatish to wheatish mud to mud fair to dark ivory to ivory charcoal to charcoal black to black black), number of moles, placement of your teeth, proportion of your eyes in relation to your face and so on. Depending on that, men can conveniently rule you out. Are the physical attributes that crucial? We know they are not (deep down, no? deep, deep down?) but yet we all blindly chase after it.
Being overweight is not trendy. I get that. I’m also aware that weight is a serious issue. California (where I live) is probably one of the most weight-obsessed places in the world. I’m not proposing putting morbidly obese actresses on screen and proclaiming that being fat is healthy. I’m talking of a normal looking female to be perceived as…well, normal. Watching a chubby female on camera is okay. Gents, face it and move on. Ladies, think about it, accept it. Do it today if you can.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for healthy living. Eating right and exercising should be treated as medicine, as much as a lifestyle. But I draw a line at starvation. Frankly, is there even a visible difference between Size Zero and Size Three? Do you really want to gorge on carrots and celery every day, so you can shed all your clothes and show the world that you’ve gorged on carrots and celery? So that men and women could gawk at your exposed body and admire its tolerance to famishment? And don’t pretend you are only doing it to stay healthy. Because staying healthy could be done by adding sugar to your coffee once in a while and because you really want to stay and look healthy and not because, wait for it – “the script demanded it.”
All in all, this needs to change. Seriously. But till then, the question remains – can we have a plus-size Sheila? Fat chance.
(Devashree Shivadekar is a Los Angeles based screenwriter, originally from Mumbai. She did her Bachelor of Arts in Economics from University of Mumbai, and Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from the New York Film Academy. She’s written more than 15 screenplays in the last 18 months, including a short film that was in official selection at the Cannes Film Festival 2013.)