Katrina Kaif had a baby, and her body changed. You would think she had committed a crime, given how the internet erupted when people saw her recent photographs at a Ganpati appearance.
She had “changed”. There were questions, diagnoses and, of course, unsolicited suggestions that she should “get back in shape”.
Get back to where, exactly?
Strangers sitting in their bedrooms have become magnificently presumptuous as they peer at photographs of a woman who has just become a mother and decide that she has let herself go. The sheer administrative efficiency with which the Indian internet appoints itself guardian of women’s waistlines is commendable.
Katrina, it appears, failed her annual beauty inspection. One can almost imagine the committee meeting.
“Hmm. Formerly very slim. Excellent bone structure. International appeal. Strong cheekbones. But what happened here?”
“Motherhood, sir.”
“Unacceptable. Have we asked her to lose the weight?”
“No? Well, somebody should.”
“Okay, let me go type a nasty message on Instagram, maybe tag her husband to put her back on track.”
We have seen this movie before.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan went through the same scrutiny after giving birth to Aaradhya in 2011. By the time she appeared at Cannes in 2012, six months after childbirth, her postpartum body had become an international talking point. Headlines screamed about her weight. Comment sections debated whether one of the most beautiful women in the world had a “duty” to look slimmer.
Aishwarya was not hiding. She turned up at Cannes. How dare she, the custodians of women’s bodies yelled, without shedding the extra kilos?
And here we are, 14 years later, with better cameras, faster Wi-Fi, and exactly the same neurosis. For her, for Katrina, and anybody else.
Childbirth is now supposed to be followed by a prompt return to the pre-baby body, preferably before the photographs begin circulating. A woman may spend nine months growing an actual human being, endure childbirth, sleep deprivation, hormonal upheaval, and the general storm of having her entire existence rearranged, but how dare her body retain the evidence?
We have become terribly impatient with women who insist on looking as though life has happened to them.
Hollywood has had its own version of this beauty tribunal. After giving birth, Anne Hathaway and Blake Lively both pushed back against the expectation that women should immediately become “Victoria’s Secret-ready”.
And still, the paps snap their pictures and we throw our unsolicited opinions hiding behind keyboards, still comparing a woman at 40 to her younger self at 20.
Katrina has spent decades being rewarded for looking like Katrina Kaif. She became one of Bollywood’s great beauty ideals: the face, the body, the hair, the dignified woman. Generations of women have been encouraged to look at her, try to be her. Men have been wanting to be with her, or someone like her.
But bodies are not photographs.
Also read: Indian paps don’t respect boundaries. Actors’ backsides have become money shots
What Katrina owes us
Katrina spoke about this in her recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, discussing the changes pregnancy brought to her skin and the way she now approaches beauty. Her skin became more sensitive, she said, forcing her to rethink what worked for her. Even “looking my best” has acquired a different meaning for her now.
How terribly sensible.
Unfortunately, common sense is not nearly as entertaining as a before-and-after photograph.
We are obsessed with the “before”. We are even more obsessed with the “after”. The woman in between—the one actually living through the experience—is somehow of no interest.
And let us talk about the peculiar celebration that awaits a celebrity woman who manages to lose her pregnancy weight quickly. She’s back! Whoa! Look at her! How did she do it?
Back where?
A woman’s body is permitted to wander temporarily, provided it eventually returns home looking exactly as it did before. Let’s completely ignore the ordinary biological fact that a human body does not operate like a rubber band.
It is a conspicuous little game, and women are somehow expected to be grateful for being invited to play.
And if she doesn’t lose the weight? We all know what happens next. They did it to Bipasha Basu, Kiara Advani, Neha Dhupia, Sameera Reddy—any woman who didn’t pull up her socks and fulfil her first and foremost duty of looking ‘beautiful’.
Everyone feels entitled to demand a quarterly performance report from a woman celebrity. She has KRAs: glamorous but relatable, sexy but respectable. She should age without it showing on her skin, have children, but with a Shilpa Shetty waistline—the demands go on.
And of course, women at home face this cruel pressure on a daily basis, in person, from their loved ones. We call this progress because we have replaced “stay thin” with more sophisticated vocabulary: ‘glow’, ‘self-care’, ‘wellness’.
Katrina does not owe us anything. Her admirers have to just deal with the fact that even perfect bodies change. And she certainly doesn’t owe us an explanation.
Women have spent centuries being told how they should look. We have simply become much better at pretending the instructions are compliments.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)