That was in May 1994. In November the same year I along with millions of Indians watched from our homes live on television the Miss World contest. And to our disbelief as much as to our joy once again the crown went to India’s Aishwarya Rai. Two Miss Beauties in the same year! The trend continued with Diana Hayden bagging the Miss World in 1997 and Yukta Mookhey in 1999. It reached it’s climax in the year 2000 when three most coveted titles- Miss Universe, Miss World and Miss Asia Pacific were won by Lara Dutta, Priyanka Chopra and Diya Mirza respectively. India had got a hat trick!

Suddenly everyone was talking about Indian beauty being recognized in the International world, even when these women were not the ‘first’ Indians to win these titles. The Miss World title was won by Reita Faria in 1966 and Miss Asia-Pacific was won by Zeenat Aman in 1970 and by Tara Anne Fonseca in 1973. But there was no doubt a difference between then and now.

Cynics were quick to point out the source of the difference. They attributed the difference and the surge of beauty crowns in India’s favour to the changes and shifts that were happening in India’s economic policy. In 1991 the liberalization of the economy opened the floodgates of the Indian market to the International world. 1991-‘92 also marked the entry of Satellite television into Indian homes. With millions of Indians and people world over watching these contests, beauty pageants were the best sites for the fashion and beauty industry to advertise their products and services. The market started investing in the participants and the media popularized the pageants for their own profit.

The success of Indian beauties in the international arena helped India catch the eye of the international market. This changed the whole look of the Miss India contest. Suddenly everything that the participants wore was sponsored. Beginning from their clothes, shoes, jewelry, and cosmetics, to their eyes, hair and smile. A whole market grew around the beauty contest comprising of designers, cosmetic companies, event managers, health, beauty and grooming professionals, each of them trying to make a place for themselves in the international as well as national market.

Contestants were being ‘groomed’ to give them the ‘International Look’; coached on how to walk, talk, how to beat stress, how to smile, how to look good. Rounds testing the ‘grey matter’ of these beauties were introduced to rid the contest off its ‘beauty without brains’ title. A formula was worked out that would create ‘the woman of substance’.

Even if the participants did not win, the contest became a launching pad for careers in the world of fashion, entertainment and beauty. Pageant sponsors offered lucrative endorsement deals. Organizers declared the pageant as a medium that offers a transformation platform for young aspirants from small towns and big cities of India into the landscape of opportunities in the emerging India.

Anyone who could learn the formula would be able to make it into the world of fame and glamour. Soon smaller beauty pageants lapped up the ‘winning formula’ tactics and one found a spate of such contests being held in different states, districts, muhallas, galis, colleges, schools etc. The flight, that ‘ordinary’ women like Sushmita Sen, Yukta Mookhey, Lara Dutta and others made from anonymity to fame and success, inspired among many young aspirants the hope that they had the chance to achieve what these women had. This trend has increased with other programs such as Indian Idol, where young boys and girls from far off towns, villages and small cities, are finding themselves pampered and transformed by the limelight.

The ‘ordinary’ and the anonymous making it big through the fashion and beauty industry has resonated most with the middle-class. The manager of Smiles, a model training agency in Mumbai, states that most of it’s clients are ‘out-of-towners’. Dr Vijay Sharma, president of Indian Association of Cosmetic Surgery (IACS) and Federation of Restorative and Cosmetic Surgery (FRCS), says that only 30 per cent of the clientele now is the affluent, the bulk being the middle class.

One look at the advertising columns in newspapers and magazines will tell us the rate at which ‘grooming’ schools are coming up. Middle-class parents are coughing up money to send their girls to these private, nameless ‘grooming’ schools, modeling and recruitment agencies. It is estimated that these ‘schools’ charge up to Rs. 30,000/- for 6-8 week courses in grooming, accent-diction, personality development, etc.

The middle-class, for whom even a generation ago the women in the glamour business were considered to be licentious, are now spending their earnings on gaining entry for their daughters into the ‘right’ circle and make the ‘right’ contacts. In their desire to break through the beauty elite, young girls often find themselves in unsavory and risky situations such as sex rackets, substance/steroid abuse, and anorexia. Parents being cheated of their money by dubious ‘schools’ and ‘agents’ are not unheard of either. The tragic deaths of Nafisa Joseph and her friend Kuljeet Randhawa are instances that tell us that all is not well in the world of glitter, glamour and money. And yet contests such as Miss Monsoon, Miss Borivilli, Miss NOIDA, Miss Meerut etc. are held all over India, where participants walk the catwalk with the dream that someone will ‘spot’ them and take them into the world of dreams and aspirations.

Aspirations are what drive us to excel and live out our uniqueness. Aspiring to be rich and famous is not a sin. But is this aspiration, fuelled by the desire to get ahead in the race for instant fame and money, affecting the rational thinking of many of these young girls who are opting out of education and clamoring to enter into the beauty and fashion world? While it is the upper crust of this middle-class who make it to the top what happens to the millions of others who do not succeed after spending precious time and resources in ‘grooming’ themselves? What happens to these young girls when they come back to find that they are left without any other career choice in this highly competitive world?

It is interesting that the scramble for fame and glamour is happening within the dominant middle-class whose ideology holds morality as intrinsically related/intertwined with women and their sexuality. Are we then saying that the middle-class sexuality is transforming, is becoming more liberal?

If so then why did a former Miss India, Lakshmi Pandit, have to lie that she was married to her boyfriend in order to rent a flat in a middle-class locality in Mumbai, when it was a middle-class suburban locality from where Yukta Mookhey rose to fame? Why did the swimsuit round have to be taken off public airing but continued in private where entry is by invitation only? Why is body baring more acceptable on the international platform than on the national platform? It seems that in its attempt to reap the financial benefits of liberalization the middle-class has skipped over its much-coveted morality.

The story of Kamana Chaudhary a former Miss Agra, narrated by Jasjit in her post ‘A Bird’s Eye-view of a Moral Ragbag’; the sex scandal that Anara Gupta a former Miss Jammu was framed in and numerous other such incidents that keep making headlines in newspapers speak in themselves of the conservative social milieu from which these young starry eyed girls come from. In the absence of safety nets what happens to these girls when they are unable to reach the stars that they were aiming for and fall back into a society that is hostile and uncompassionate to their desires and aspirations?