Kolkata: Khushboo Sharma was relentlessly bullied in school for being a big girl, and that led her to constantly question her self-worth. Growing up in the small town of Vadodara in Gujarat, becoming a model couldn’t be further from her mind. To combat the shame she felt in her skin, she chose academics, so that people would “at least appreciate me for my brains”. She became a data scientist.
Body negativity, however, is an issue that tends to resurface. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, her insecurities resurfaced when she experienced a relationship break-up. She attributes it to her plus-sized frame.
The mental turmoil hampered her professional work and she started to journal to get out of that sinking feeling. Things took a dramatic turn when a modeling agency noticed her self-styled photos on Instagram and offered her work.
Today, a seasoned model, Sharma talks about how fashion has given her more than money could measure. “It has made me appreciate myself, given me self-esteem and pride. Today, I am a role model for many plus-sized women and I get messages where they say that they have been inspired to wear swimwear because of me”.
Khushboo Sharma. Photo provided by author.
While thriving in her newfound self-love, Sharma rues the fact that not enough is being done to increase the representation of alternate beauties in the Indian fashion industry.
“Proper scouting is not done for the plus-sized community, and only the models who had begun the diversity movement end up getting all the spots. The new girls are hardly featured. There has been no attempt to build and empower a community for upcoming faces and the same faces keep getting the opportunities.”
Sharma claims to have built a plus-sized community of 5,000 women who aspire to work in the fashion industry. Sharma is also proud that her peers from her hometown have followed in her footsteps in owning their bodies and aspiring for a modelling career. “Brands like House of Soho and Sajke are some of my hometown brands featuring plus-sized models,” says Sharma.
Glorification of beauty that often adheres to western standards leads to a huge section of insecure and neglected aspirants. India’s obsession with fair skin is a well-known fact. Due to pressures from a liberated feminist audience, Hindustan Unilever’s popular skin lightening cream ‘Fair & Lovely’ had to rebrand their product to ‘Glow & Lovely’.
Sangeeta Gharu, a dusky beauty from Rajasthan’s Jodhpur, has a similar story. She was greatly stirred when she saw the 2008 Bollywood blockbuster film Fashion, a star-spangled movie directed by Madhur Bhandarkar that dealt with the darker sides of the Indian fashion industry and how models fight them.
“That’s where I first saw tall, lanky, dark-skinned models and fell in love with them,” says Gharu, who has been chasing her dreams across Jodhpur, Jaipur, and finally Mumbai, the home to Bollywood.
She recalls years of gruelling hard work punctuated by painful rejections due to her dark skin tone. She gives a lot of credit to her mentor for counselling her. She was taught to first accept herself as beautiful before expecting recruiters to see the beauty in her.
“I would like to tell every dark-skinned model out there, to love yourself and work hard – you will definitely succeed!” says Gharu.
Indian fashion is still suffering from the patriarchal mindset where the male gaze allows only fair, slim, and tall models to be appreciated.
“The beauty standards in fashion are just the reflection of the beauty mindsets of all women. They are increasingly getting Botox to fix their noses, lips, faces, etc. They do it because they think it will earn them more love and ‘likes’ on social media,” says Geetanjali Adhikari, a model from Delhi, whose fashion journey is one from facing fat-shaming to gaining acceptance and ultimately achieving industry success.
“I consider myself very lucky for being a plus-sized model. The body I was stigmatised for, is now celebrated. But I feel sorry for the big curvy girls who are still struggling within their bodies.”
Also read: Fashionably Queer: What Does Fashion Mean to India’s Queer Persons?
Tokenism in the fashion industry
According to Luna, a transgender model and drag queen, the concept or idea of fashion is inclusive but the business of fashion may not be so. She says that tokenism continues to exist in Indian fashion despite significant strides having been made in inclusion and diversity.
“The business unfortunately has been run by men who have instilled their biases. That said, I am extremely thankful for social media because ten years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined myself where I am today. I always thought fashion was not for me. Now, when I am in a room with people I have grown up idolising, it hits differently,” she says.
Toshada Uma, who is 4’9” tall, has lost count of runway shows she has walked while wearing shoes that are 2-4 sizes above hers. Her height is well below the conventional average. She remembers how, on multiple instances, her colleagues asked her what she did for a living. It sounded like they doubted if she belonged to the same set, got the same pay, and worked the same hours as them.
“The situation makes one think if things would be any different if the industry hired diverse models not just for some brownie points but because they genuinely believed it was important to represent various features,” Uma says, citing the common practice of tokenist inclusion versus an organic attempt to change the culture of recruiting in the industry.
Sharma considers the plus-sized fashion industry in India to be dysfunctional. “The clothes that are meant for us are unattractive and have no sense of creativity,” she says, adding to the narrative that attempts to increase representation on the ramp are much more cosmetic than constructive.
Speaking about the pretentious malpractices, she says one of India’s major fashion events is known for giving out generic casting calls that encourage models of all looks, genders, and ethnicities to upload their photos and videos with the event hashtag. “But they don’t even bother to see these videos that are uploaded,” she claims.
“This is our lived experience. We are ready to struggle for our spots, but giving us false hopes is just cruel,” says Sharma.
However, the fashion diversity landscape is slowly evolving.
Fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee has on many occasions set high benchmarks for inclusion and diversity in Indian fashion. From introducing plus-sized models to giving opportunities to unconventional beauties, Mukherjee has made a name for his originality. The recent controversy where he was trolled for an unsmiling model, also demonstrates his bold choices.
Other designers who have done considerable work in increasing marginalised representation in Indian fashion include Manish Malhotra, Shivan and Narresh, Kunal Rawal, and Pallavi Mohan. Brands like Freakins, Zivame, Puma, Nykaa, Titan Raga, Vulgar, Fenty, Yeezy, and others, have joined the inclusivity bandwagon.
Gauthami Jeji, a bisexual Indian model with vitiligo skin disorder, says that the COVID-19 pandemic was a watershed moment in Indian fashion. According to her, the stagnation in fashion standards and audience boredom prompted designers, producers, and agencies to explore new looks. Her skin condition has been a blessing in disguise, leading to casting calls since she was 17.
“Vitiligo has certainly given me an edge but my position in the industry will be sustained because I am very good at what I do,” she says. She further points out the need for honest representation. She adds that celebrating diversity and capitalising on a disorder are two very different things. “I have faced tokenism personally – for example, for one shoot they take unique models and just don’t employ them again.”
Jeji believes that for things to change, the marginalised representation must be honest and transparent. Only then can beauty adapt to new standards organically.
Gauthami Jeji. Photo provided by author.
“I would like to see a world where models are called models, not plus-sized or trans models. We don’t call doctors plus-sized doctors, do we?”
For Sharma, the solution lies in raising awareness about body positivity and highlighting inspiring stories about fashion professionals who have overcome biases and are successful irrespective of how they look.
Uma looks forward to fashion being recontextualized as just another career path, and not a tool for cosmetic validation. Attaching glamour and self-worth to fashion makes it exploitative and unnecessarily overrated. “It’s good to realise that the only validation we need is our own. If modelling is what you want to do, give it your 100%, confidently. If it works out, it’s great, if it does not, keep your options open!” she says.
Sreemanti Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer.