A certificate from the Prime Minister

A certificate from the Prime Minister
Anjali Mody

When I spoke to journalists in London last week about why beauty contests were not events of any importance here, the response I got was uniform confusion that someone could even be asking this question. Women here apparently don't want to be judged by what they look like, but by what they do and think. Imagine that. What a bizarre idea, a babe now wants you to notice her brain not her bust.

In India, repository of all great traditions, we know otherwise. Even our Prime Minister understands the overwhelming significance of a good looking woman. So much so he issued a statement after Lara Dutta won an international boobs and bum contest saying this was a "tribute to the Indian woman and her aspirations for excellence''.

There are few countries in the world which do not have beauty contests. But we stand out, alone, as the country which makes international recognition of good grooming an issue of national pride. In the end our national pride may depend on a bunch of boxers, racing car drivers, and fashion photographers, but who cares. The Prime Minister thinks them worthy judges of the Indian woman's "aspirations for excellence".

Vajpayee, along with the majority of the media, by celebrating Lara Dutta and her ilk are sending an unambiguous message to women in India: a perfect body, tutored diction, and an engineered smile are the passport to success. The infant Aastha, trundled out on May 11 by government spin doctors as the billionth Indian, should expect, if she is born beautiful and eventually packaged by Femina, that she will have a chance in life, if not, she will not. More power to Lara Dutta and her beautiful predecessors for the choices they've made and the profits they have brought the Times group and Zee TV.

But to even attempt to hold these women up as role models, is a kick in the teeth for every woman in India who has got to where she has got because of her abilities and not because of the brilliance of her smile or the ratio of her hips to her breasts.

All you hopeful young women, what the press and the PM are telling you is that your dreams of being a doctor or an astronaut, a writer or a stock broker, a diplomat or a journalist or even a prime minister, are signs of seriously low aspiration. But if you dream (from the age of seven or there about) of being an internationally acknowledged beauty, you are reaching for the stars. If truth be told, for every Lara or Yukta, or Lara/Yukta wannabe, there are several million of us, who know that we will never have to depend on what we look like to make something of our lives. We won't smile out of the front pages of newspapers, or have prime ministers singing our praise, but nor will we have to repeat well rehearsed speeches (of no more than three sentences) to promote a business that profits from our bodies.

The fact is that the Prime Minister, the press and the entire caboodle that is the beauty industry, far from reaching for the stars or celebrating Indian women's "aspirations for excellence", are actually scrambling around in the dustbins of the west. Picking up crowns and sashes long discarded as tacky jokes from another age. They show us up as a pathetically insecure nation which desperately craves the approval of the West, whether for our bombs or our busts.