Hallelujah, heroines are visible again!

Actor Deepika Padukone in the song 'Main Lovely Ho Gayi' (screen shot).

When top actresses refuse to shrink themselves according to reigning weight laws, the popular narrative on aesthetics pleasantly digresses.  Somewhere along the way, no thin was thin enough; body dysmorphia, eating disorders and ‘mirror, mirror on the wall’. Starve or lose meaty roles. Women who didn’t fit into this contracted frame were cast as heroine’s sakhi or comic relief. They could run after the hero all they want, but the hero kept his lechery for the skinny minny lead actress.

Whether it is Deepika Padukone admitting ‘Main lovely ho gayi’ or Nicole Kidman frowning through The Undoing, most female leads pivot on a skeletal pelvis. In split ghaghras or velvet gowns, their hip sockets are clear as an X-ray. Whether special effects – Photoshop or DOP – give heroes bulging biceps and heroines concave midriffs is a moot question. They may be fake, plastic surgery, smoke and mirrors or sleight of hand.  That is the magic of the movies: we blindly trust our icons when the lights dim. We want to be them.

Makeup MNCs entered India around the same time that international fast food chains set up shop here. Looking good and feeling fit became a fight. From the thunder thigh era of the eighties when actresses brought the wonderful energy of carbs to their dance steps to today’s thigh gap gyms when mere sprouts must animate all four limbs, the shedding of flab has been a visible female journey on celluloid, one fat cell at a time. In such a highly visual medium as films, there are those rumoured to have removed ribs and hired surrogates to maintain silhouette. Tummies are tucked and faces nipped. Chins and cheeks are so dramatically altered from frame to frame, we can almost hear the saw on their jaw.

Which is why the new visuals though few seem promising... Suddenly, the onus seems to have shifted to talent, to conveying realism. Kate Winslet in and as Mare of Easttown gives us woman unvarnished. Pared down to the bone in the characterisation department, there is nothing deliberately reductive about her bodily presentation of self. Those large jackets can only bulk one up further. Parvathy in Aarkkariyam and Nimisha in Nayattu don’t bother to flaunt waistlines. Camera neither flatters nor lingers. Their clothes are homely, hair pulled back into careless knots. Parineeti in Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar is all about who she plays. In unflattering sweatpants.

Actor Parineeti Chopra in 'Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar' (screen shot).

A good bone structure has to be padded with talent – scrumptious, delicious, tasty acting skills we can eat off the screen. Eye candy has its place, sure. When Mare’s colleague dies, we instantly mourn the end of his handsomeness. But an artist’s exterior is so entwined with his/her presence, viewers are hard-pressed to separate the two. Fans imitate idols, idols know this and yet, in an act of superiority and betrayal, go fake their own beauty. Basically, fat-shaming fans at a 70-mm level.

Reel people have to closely resemble real people, who come in all shapes and sizes. It is time to portray women as they are – living, breathing and... eating.