The Body and the Beautiful

The Body and the Beautiful
Shailaja Bajpai

How do I become Miss India, asks the Postman advertisement? By watching Femina-Palmolive Miss India (DD2, Sony). Watch how the young women glide, how they balance flower-pot headgears better than prospective air-hostesses do books, how they hold out their arms for longer than traffic policemen, how they manage to drape a saree as though it were a gown, how they smile in the face of defeat, incessantly as if invisible strings were holding up their cheek muscles, how they are never, never lost for an answer to the most unusual questions.(Note: Thefollowing answers are entirely fictitious.)

Anjolie Menon: What qualities do you require during a hijack crisis?
A: Mercy in the hijackers.
Juhi Chawla: If you could have a sixth sense what would it be?
A: To read judges' minds and win these contests.
Waheeda Rehman: Is it difficult to be a beautiful person?
A: Who cares so long as I have a beautiful bod?
Femina Miss India: If ignorance is bliss why seek knowledge?
A:Whose seeking knowledge?
Now, what does it take for you to become like them?
In order to wow the judges with your `beautiful' brains, you will require the combined efforts of many helpful hands from many different quarters. In fact, it is almost insulting: when you look at the people summoned to mould those gals into into queens, it is clear that between them they could transform the ugly duckling into a winner, the beast into a beauty.

Those involved with these shows have tied up their tongues in double-knots, telling you, selling you these competitions as PCs rather than BCs: not Beauty Contests but Personality Competitions. But look at the list of people/corporations gratefully acknowledged at the end: Hemant Trivedi, designer, Ritu Kumar, designer, a diet food specialist (sorry, missed the name), Catwalk Shoes, Gomzi Clothes, Chambor Fragrances, Ray Bans glasses and Provogue (has to be something fashionable), Esteem jewellery, Prithvi Furnitures, Rajah Hosiery, Bennetton, Lee Jeans, Copper Chics(?), Silk Moss Under-something or the other....Not a brain specialist between them.

You do possess the brains to realise that inspite of all the protestations, what is being sold here is the body not the mind?

If you become Miss India, you're not going to win a scholarship to IIT, MIT, Oxbridge or Ivy League America. Instead, you stand to win a (fake?) tiara. Also, you'll drive away in a Matiz car, you'll drink a toast to yourself in Swarovksi crystal (``mirror, mirror on the wall/I am the most beautiful of them all''), you'll check out your timing in a Baume & Mercier watch, you will rest and recreate in London, Singapore or Thailand, you'll have LG-TVs to ensure you watch future Femina Miss India contests, Aiwa washing machines in which to clean all those curious clothes you wore... This is just a drizzle of the gifts which will be showered upon you. No need for your parents to reduce their bank balance over trifles such as dowries everything will be yours alongwith the crown.

At the end of thecontest, which was past midnight Saturday, Madonna and Deepak Chopra celebrated the essence of the Indian woman. Seriously. As part of the celebration, there followed the parade of world winners: Sushmita, Aishwarya, Diana, Yukta and all those who ran out losers, poor dears. Presenters Rahul Khanna and Malaika, reading prettily and fluently from the tele-prompter, extolled the virtues of Indian womanhood. And indeed, when you saw those women gathered together like a bouquet of flowers for the photo opportunity of the year (alas, no longer the Millennium), it was enough to swell out any bharatiya nari's bosom with pride (and envy!).

Then, because you are a real kill-joy, you remember the condition of women in this country. Oh dearie me. Uneducated, unhealthy, undernourished, poorly clothed, badly mistreated. You read how many die in childbirth because they don't receive the care they need, how the girl child is discriminated against in every conceivable way.

If there is one thing this country cannot takepride in, it is in the treatment of its women. As you watch the Miss India winners and contestants wave their gloved (?) hands and blow kisses, you wonder why we make such tremendous efforts to celebrate the beauty of the Indian woman but do so pathetically little to improve her condition? You ask yourself: have these commodified women and all the others like them in the entertaiment, fashion and advertising industries, with their beauty and their brains, contributed to any signficant change in our perception or treatment of other women?As Lara, Priyanka and Diya linked arms around each other's waists, you wished their victory could have been a defeat for all those who oppress millions of others.

Alas. That hope much less likely to be fulfilled than hoping India can beat Australia or Pakistan in cricket.