Unapologetically Curvaceous

(An Ode to the Indian Woman)

She is over-weight not by choice or gluttony, but by the compulsion of single-minded devotion towards her family. Taking care of elderly in-laws, getting the children to school in the morning and helping out with homework when they get back, getting the evasive bais to take care of house-hold chores and then having to be the consort to her husband who gets back ‘fatigued’ from a long day of work. It is a truly sad state of affairs, when the Indian woman is made to feel apologetic about the way she looks.

Pick up any fashion magazine out there, Cosmopolitan, Maxim, Femina, even our very own Greh-Shobha. Look at the cover-page and tell me how many women you know who look like that. Even our desi greats like Tarun Tahiliani, Vikram Phadnis or Rohit Bal are so busy dressing up women of the likes of Carol Gracias and Jesse Randhawa (who would look good even in a jute bag!) that they overlook the overwhelming majority of women, who too look at them for inspiration. ‘Haute Coutour’ and ‘Pret a Porter’ are not terms they might be familiar with, but behind that French Jargon is the essence of ‘good styling’: of ‘looking good’ and ‘feeling good while you are doing it’. When the Indian women steps into boutiques and workshops-shops of their master jis with an imported vocabulary and semantics of fashion, it has the makings of a disaster. Few women find clothes which compliment them for who they are. More often than not, clothes are reduced to mere camouflage of ‘body-defects’.

Be it the yakshis of Ajanta-Ellora or the women immortalized in the sculptures of Khajuraho, Indian women have traditionally been celebrated as voluptuous, buxom with large child bearing hips. It is time our designers take up the challenge of styling a woman no taller than 5’2”, hips scarred by child-birth, and a torso struggling against the forces of gravity. Rather than misplaced comparisons with tall, flat-chested, anorexic Ukranian models our women need to be recognized and appreciated for their beauty. They seriously don’t have to prance around in bikinis (leaving little to imagination!) to get male attention, when they can make heart swoon with the slip of a palloo. Kudos to them!