India Kids Fashion Week: Hail the ten year old beauty queen!

“When I walked out on the ramp the first time, people started screaming. It felt great. And anyway, I know I am the prettiest. I don’t look at other children, they look at me," says seven year old Chantel Dias in just one of the many cringe-inducing moments offered by Open magazine’s article on the first ever India Kids Fashion Week. The narrative is predictable as are its leading characters. There are the kids: precocious, narcissistic, and all-out scary. Little monsters who say things like, “She isn’t as pretty as us. She can’t be in the picture.” The advertising professionals who tut-tut at the “exploitation” of children even as they let their industry off the hook. And, of course, the pushy stage-parents living out their ambitions for money and fame by proxy, pretending they’re just like any other parent supporting their child’s dream. Like Ghazal Sheikh, mother of five-year-old Fiona, who tells Open, “I want her to do whatever she wants and I don’t want to say ‘no’. She loves modelling, dancing and showing off, and it’s great, because she is being herself. She reads magazines and wants the same dress and I buy it for her. Why not start young? I don’t see anything wrong in that.” Our response to stories like these is no less predictable. We dutifully shake our heads at the “bad” parents, evil fashion industry, decline of values, and wonder where it all went wrong. But these mothers – and their Frankenstein-ian spawn – are just an extreme manifestation of a beauty-obsessed culture that we all participate in when we indulgently laugh at our four-year old shimmying to Sheila ki jawani; when we shrug off the ceaseless parade of Fair & Lovely ads on TV (hell, even keep a skin-lightening tube or two in our bathrooms); when we clutter our home with beauty and movie magazines and their parade of air-brushed beauties; when we furiously rub haldi and atta on our “hairy” baby girl’s body. [caption id=“attachment_204892” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=".In our 24X7 media-saturated society, body anxiety is the new “normal,” shared by mom and daughter alike. Reuters"]  [/caption] Years ago, when one of my closest friends turned 18, her mother pulled her aside at the clubhouse swimming pool and said, “It’s time for you to lose that baby fat.” That age-old pressure starts much earlier these days – though now more often disguised as a “health” issue. I’ve witnessed doting mommies scold their ten-year old for taking a second helping of pasta, push their teenager onto a boiled chicken diet, and complain their preschooler has a “big tummy.” The bestselling diet guru these days is Kalli Purie, a woman who has banished all sweets from her home, and keeps chocolates under lock and key – to be doled out by her husband only when she really, really “begs” for one. Do we really believe her kids are growing up with a healthy relationship with food? That each of these mothers has body image problems which she fails to acknowledge is hardly a coincidence. In our 24X7 media-saturated society, body anxiety is the new “normal,” shared by mom and daughter alike. Our beauty-obsessed culture may be increasingly toxic, but most often it’s we who bring the poison into our homes. Our first unintended gift to our children is our own shame – about our weight, our skin colour, the shape of our nose. When I came back from a recent holiday five shades darker and toting an extra three kilos, I had to consciously decide to ignore a burgeoning sense of panic. Self-hate is hardwired into the female brain. Like a chronic disease, it can never be cured, only managed. It’s a lifelong battle no daughter should have to learn to fight. But here’s the really demoralising part about trying to be a good mom to your daughter – we may do our best not to be a Ghazal, but still end up with a daughter who is some version of Fiona. We may valiantly fight all the battles and still lose the war. At a recent birthday party, I heard any number of grounded, independent mothers shrug in bewilderment at their preschooler’s obsession with all things ‘girly.’ “You’re lucky that yours just wants to play dress up,” confided one, “Each time mine sees a boy, she immediately says, ‘I’m going to marry him!’ It’s all these wretched princess stories!” “Mine is hooked on Barbie TV,” wailed another, “She won’t watch anything else how much ever I try.” But what’s the solution? Raise our children in some rarefied culture bubble that is doomed to pop? Unlike the good old Doordarshan era, it is near-impossible today to insulate our daughters from the seductive allure of the Beauty Queen. It’s no longer about Barbie or Cinderella, but Aishwarya, Bipasha and Priyanka. As Meenal Baghel observes in her new book, Death in Mumbai:

In the pre L’Oreal generation, an academic duffer’s best bet was to study home science, and an ad extolling her homely-comely charms in the matrimonial section of a newspaper. But the collective fetishising of Sushmita Sen, Aishwariya Rai, and Priyanka Chopra as beauty queens opened up a whole world of possibilities for middle class girls who otherwise failed at the Great Indian Crucible: Studies. Beauty pageants became the new UPSC. You could be Miss Sector 27, Miss Kanpur, Miss Asia-Pacific and if all went well, Miss World. Sushmita, Aishwarya, Bipasha, Priyanka – non-graduates all– came to symbolise the resurgent Indian woman.

The temptation is all the greater for a child who could possibly be Miss Sector 27. There are the toys, movies, yes, but also the innumerable compliments doled out by friends, relatives and strangers alike. All the well-meaning folks who have taught my three-year old daughter to confidently assert, “I’m so pretty, mama!” It sounds absurd, perhaps even slyly self-serving, but it would have been easier – for me, at least – to parent a daughter who didn’t fit societal standards of beauty. I could’ve taught her to value herself for her mind, her sense of humour, her charm. But this…this is harder. “She’s gorgeous, yaar. You need to get her into modelling,” says a friend, and I bristle, “Why? So she can learn that the only thing worthwhile about her is the way she looks?” “Don’t worry. She’ll learn that soon enough,” he says in jest. It’s not funny but we both know it’s true. In the end, it’s always all about the pretty.