Moderate Mahila Mandate: Does the depiction of Abha Sabharwal in Breathe herald the change of body politics on screen?

As I spent the weekend binge-watching the highly addictive Breathe: Into The Shadows, cheerleading alternatively for Abhishek Bachchan , Amit Sadh , Mayank Sharma , and the brilliance of the cast and writers, the one character I cheered most for was Abha Sabharwal, played by the iridescent Nithya Menen . Her atypical appearance and the absence of dialogue about it is new territory for Indian screen. Throughout history, women’s status has been reduced to being physical objects. Take any movie and a girl will either be conventionally attractive for a man to notice her, or she’ll undergo a makeover for a man to notice her. But Abha’s value isn’t predetermined by her size. Her life doesn’t revolve around her weight. Her life is reflected in the complex rendering of the show’s characters, an overwrought mother in search of her kidnapped 6-year-old daughter, instead of the tragedy in which normal-to-large-sized female leads are assumed to be living.

Almost all female-led Indian shows and movies over-index tropes to the point of hysteria. A smart woman will be manipulative. An ambitious woman will sleep with her boss. A rich woman will be alone. A successful woman will be a smoker. A woman with an opinion will be unpleasant. Or, they will overcompensate and glorify the woman. An unconventional-looking female protagonist will be a sweet unloved girl in the quest to change her appearance … so she can be loved. A plus-sized character will be pigeonholed as unworthy of being desired, pleasured, promoted, or loved. Ugh. Serious issues are shoehorned into aspirational soap operas with zero nuance or sense. By merely ticking a box, these shows exploit experiences to sell products. They try to sell some sparkly postfeminist fantasy that should be retired. They do a greater disservice to women than service, while claiming otherwise. Because nothing changes for women who continue to exist in binaries. Abha is different from how leading ladies without typical body privilege are represented on screen. The size of Abha’s body is neither mentioned nor discussed. There’s no handwringing about her weight, feelings of ennui and inadequacy, or the amount of esteem she should have. Instead, she navigates her world with an air of someone who knows she is worthy of good things––a doting husband, a successful career, a beautiful home, a perfect life. Her size is a component of her character, not the character itself. This has not been done before. Dum Laga Ke Haisha , delightful in that it showed Bhumi Pednekar as an overweight housewife who didn’t believe that anything was outside her reach because she wasn’t the ‘ideal’ form of beauty, was still undone by underlying ideas that buoy the narrative of the ‘perfect’ woman. A film about embracing body positivity Double XL has a protagonist Saira who assumes she should be grateful for male attention. In Four More Shots , Siddhi Patel is shamed by her ‘perfect’ mother. Even champions of body positivity get bogged down by body shaming because, in all honesty, isn’t that the reality? Plus-size people are assumed to be obsessed with losing weight, with being lonely because they lack romantic love, or feeling stunted in their careers. And being truthful is being realistic, right? And so, the “tragic fat girl” lead being unworthy of happiness comes with all the expected trappings––protect female protagonists from fatphobia by making them conscious of the amount of space they take up in the world. It’s a new iteration of the same old story: the “concerned” uncle or aunty telling the girl to not eat that samosa, to do HITT workouts, to follow Malaika Arora ’s diet, unsolicited remarks peddling the same notion that society has internalized––that our bodies must change to be loved. The medium has changed, the scolding has not. Through my work, I have met some of India’s most beautiful women. Till date, I have yet to meet a woman who is happy with her body. Or a woman who doesn’t think that all her problems will get solved if she loses 5 more kilos! Despite all our chatter of body positivity, we can’t seem to shut off the internalized dialogue that women must look a specific way in order to be loved or successful or beautiful. Society insists on reinforcing the notion that a woman can never be thin enough. This never holds up for the opposite gender paradigm. Men with offbeat looks, from Shah Rukh Khan to Ajay Devgn , can pursue classically attractive women, because they’re loved as complete packages with personalities. Can’t we offer the same to our female actors? Can’t we remove close-minded notions of how women must look, so younger generations can unplug the cultural messaging that treat women as objects? If we see three-dimensional female characters in different shapes and sizes on screen, leading enriched lives instead of apologetic ones, it will internalize the idea that this can happen, just as the generation before (us) clearly internalized that it cannot. Representation is not about inclusion but normalising the inclusion. Not discussion but integration. This is also not about having fewer plus-sized leads, but about normalising their presence on screen, so it’s normalised in real life as well. Just like a good medical drama consults doctors, or a legal drama consults lawyers, perhaps it’s time characters in larger bodies are written by people who navigate this world, instead of those who imagine it. The body politics of screen is due for a workout of its own and it would bode well for it to shake off the redundancies that weigh heavy on it, so that society can finally too. Meghna Pant is a multiple award-winning and bestselling author, screenwriter, columnist and speaker, whose latest novel BOYS DON’T CRY (Penguin Random House) will soon be seen on screen. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .