Lust property

Two days back, the back page of a daily had this rather huge picture of a woman’s back side that said “WHAT AN ASS” in all capitals. The woman in question was showing off her ample rear for a jeans brand that incidentally also doubled up as a writing board for the copywriter’s rather trite one-liners. An example of one of the patronisingly sexist taglines: “The idiot who refused me a ride home.”
A few days back, there was a news story about Air India’s decision to clear its stock of “matron-like” air-hostesses and replace them with the young, alluring ones. The national carrier, it seems, has had enough of plain Janes adorning the aisles; it now wants to add chutzpah to its flights of fancy. It wants to follow the success route of other airlines, whose USP is not their fleet of safe aircraft and sober pilots, but its flock of hot, attractive air-hostesses. The news story also had a table on the list of airlines that had the highest BQ (beauty quotient). Needlessly to say, Richard Branson’s Virgin topped the list, followed by Singapore Airlines, Air Etihad, Emirates, Aer Lingus (all in the UAE area), Lufthansa, cathay Pacific, TAP and KLM. A predictable observation is that all these airlines’ air-hostesses are (by default?) fair-skinned (by the sheer nature of their origin). India has been attempting a befitting reply to this “international look” via Punjab and Delhi, which breed the maximum number of air-hostess training institutes in the country!
Now what is the scale that measures beauty? Fair skin, tall and slim frame, and…what else? We do not know. These air-hostesses are expected to be turned out exceptionally well during each flight. They are given warnings even if their nail polish is chipped by a fraction of an inch, or their hair clips move by a few centimetres; they even face salary cuts if they weigh a few grams more. Basically, they have to sell cold sandwiches and colder juices using their bewitching smile to the starved passengers.
But does the air-hostess carry an airline’s success on her pretty shoulders? Probably. Considering a poll, in which travellers across the world preferred to savour those airlines that had the maximum DQ (drool quotient).
One can blindly credit the entertainment industry, cutting across the globe, with this large-scale commodification of women: from creating the voluptuous pin-up girls to the anorexic ramp reeds.
In the Indian film industry, female actors seem to prefer the “item girl” sobriquet after filmmakers set the trend of showcasing the bosom-heaving, cleavage-baring item girls breathing out raunchy numbers to tease the male libido. And, these show girls have created an iconic status for themselves, and are proud of it.
The Indian film industry is known to be canning this heady concoction of the “bad” woman (the I-dare-to-bare types), and her fully clothed and servile “goody” counterpart (the bejewelled and beclothed ones), to fan the flaming male fantasy. But, ultimately, both this good and the bad represent the ugly face of the raw male authority that crushes the feminism with its six-pack muscle power.