In a country where the beauty pageant has become the most favoured stage for career advancement among young women, neither feminists nor professional women can afford to dismiss, or at the very least, ignore the “achievements” of our Aishwarya Rais, Sushmita Sens, Yukta Mookheys, Diana Haydens and Lara Duttas. After all, goes the simple question that puts an end to further argument, in which other field have we won so many world titles?The Beauty Game by journalist Anita Anand situates the growth of the Indian beauty industry within the larger, global debate on the ethics of “female objectification” and suggestions of commercial exploitation. But it becomes quite clear right at the outset that Anand wishes to be an observer, not an opinion-giver. Unlike any other feminist worth her copy of Susan Faludi’s Backlash, she makes a conscious effort to abstain from taking sides — or, unlike Germaine Greer, to allow herself the ‘‘time to get angry again.’’Instead, she documents the birth of the cult of the manufactured beauty goddess in India, from the time of Reita Feria who borrowed her mother’s sari and went for Miss India contest barefoot because her sandals broke, to the days of the Mookheys and Haydens, when Pradeep Guha’s winning ‘‘crack team’’ (phrase his) of beauty-makers ‘‘who do India proud every year’’ use their skills of rhinoplasty, silicon injections and teeth-jobs to create a professional pageant winner year after year. She documents the increase in beauty pageants (21 in the capital alone), offers data supporting her claim that Rai is the biggest female icon amongst teenage girls and establishes the link between beauty and its business, with international brands and old Indian players jostling to increase their marketshares.
