We have reached yet another milestone as a community, one that was critical to our development. A desi of Indian origin has seized the coveted Miss Great Britain title!
With so few beauty pageant titles left unclaimed by the rising tide of brown in swimwear and heels, it was very important that we capture each of the remaining tiaras:
British-born Preeti Desai has become the first person of Indian origin to win the Miss Great Britain title replacing original winner Danielle Lloyd after she was stripped off the award for reportedly dating Judge Teddy Sheringham and agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine. [Link]
As with many winners, she has a heart-warming story behind her victory, one of filial piety:
Preeti gave all credit to her mum, who is recovering, from a serious illness. “When she was crowned Miss Great Britain she rang to tell me and said, ‘The crown is for you.’ I burst into tears. I felt as if I won that crown. I felt as if I am Miss Great Britain. She only wants to see me happy – both my girls do. They want to see me smiling thanks to them I was able to overcome that dreadful illness,” Hema said. [Link]
Like all good desi children, Preeti is multi-talented and ambitious. She worked for years in hair and beauty, before making a career switch to the family fireworks business and she may now be trying to get into property investment. In what I think are her own words:
She then started, and is currently working for the family business G2 Fireworks full time and was made Jr partner, which she built up after years of working for G2 Fireworks from being a child… Recently she decided to move to London and work as a model until she raised enough money to eventually get into the property business. [Link]
If you’re a fan, you can read her myspace page and personal website.
Every comment I made was a reply to someone else. And you specialize in the random hatchet attack while almost never offering your own perspective in a way that it can be evaulated by others. Your inexplicable need to defend the CV on the site with the most vicious of replies is quite apparent.
Gas face. fully given.
Well, now that you’ve invoked a sixteen-year old rap song as an oratorical device in your defense, I’m obviously incapacitated by such brilliance. Except I’m a partisan of the Beastie Boys, so I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that I am as underwhelmed now as I was then.
Interestingly othing you say has any other point than to make yourself feel superior and make other people feel like crap. Thats a pretty bad habit Communis.
Its like you think if you just make fun of somebody it takes the place of some kind of discussion. It doesn’t.
Third Base was great by the way.
Actually, I learned the phrase “tits on a stick” from my guy friends…I thought it was ubiquitous. I know that none of THEM thought of kebabs if they heard that phrase– they thought of implants. Perhaps it was more of an insular thing, which I assumed was universal.
Sahej and Communis – do you kids need a time out? Stop fighting with each other, otherwise I’ll turn this car around and drive right back home …
Manju:
Manju gets laid because he doesn’t give a shit. The rest of you, stop listening to classical feminists.
hairy_d:
I look like a gulaab jamun, actually. Round, brown, sweet and squishy when when heated right. So yes, yes I am as amazing as I sound.
…in our food… but how kind of you anyway 🙂 We’re not much hotter than your average dry, skinny ass Guju, but this Bihari will never try to pass for a Guju or anything else to assimilate in the intra-subcontinental Bihari diaspora. I still speak my ghetto ass Bihari Hindi, which, apparently, nobody understands :-/
Good that she won the Miss Britain contest. Too skinny by Indian (especially South Indian) standards though! What with the western music discussion on the other thread and women’s sizes on this thread, all I can say is a random ‘ain’t gonna bump no more (with no big fat woman)🙂
sounds like somebody needs this for christmas.
try us. you may be surprized.
And from another Vestern rock band with a [technically, but not really] desi frontman, I bring you Fat Bottomed Girls. Yes, we make the rockin’ world go ’round.
Wanted to answer this one more fully because its important to me not to do what the comment above suggests I was doing.
I don’t think my comments assumed that the woman here would break into pieces at being critisized. My objection was more to the principle of bashing people’ appearence. By definition, defending something means to percieve it as in the line of harm in some way. I do not think women are weaker and need to be protected from harm especially. Just as I don’t think desi people need to be protected from harm in a way that indicates we are especially weak. But I’ll look at it again.
Ask your doc. Mine broke down safe desi BMI/LDL/HDL numbers which my feeble 129 IQ brain can’t remember. His point was, obesity punishes desis more than whites and blacks. Not his exact words. I am oversimplifying.
Hmm. Playas talked nothing but classfem in my day. That is 15-20 yrs ago.
Everyone, just chill about Sahej. I think he was just trying to be a gentleman due to his discomfort about what he perceived to be the excessive analysis of Preeti Desai’s physique.
Her figure and level of thinness looks fairly similar to the average Victoria’s Secret model (apart from Gisele). Er…..that’s what Razib and Abhi tell me anyway. I have no idea who this “Victoria” is and why she has a secret.
I’ve noticed this too, as indicated by the number of black-haired Latin Americans (and Eastern Europeans) winning the Miss World and Miss Universe contests in recent years. There appear to a lot more dark-haired models appearing in commercials for beauty products in general these days, at least here in Britain. Great stuff, considering I’m old enough to remember when both of these areas were disproportionately dominated by blondes.
ANNA,
Perhaps more accurately, it’s regarded as ideal for the kind of modelling she does and the type of beauty contest(s) she’s involved in. Generally-speaking, guys in Britain tend to prefer their ladies to be slightly curvier, as both personal anecdotes and various surveys on the topic confirm.
Amitabh,
Some of ’em here are even hotter, mundea 😉
What I will say is that Preeti’s certainly pushing the boundaries with regards to her being open to posing for Playboy. The British Indian community is increasingly liberal and Westernised these days, but — at least with regards to the older generation — they’re not that liberal. I can imagine the eyebrows being raised amongst uncles and aunties all over the UK. Preeti’s got guts for “doing it anyway”.
Comment #96 (Maggi noodles) is right on – you can’t win as a desi woman. You’re either told you’re too skinny and need to eat eat eat (me at 18) or the moment you put on enough weight to send you one kilo over ideal or your waistline one inch too big, the entire family starts teasing you about getting fat. We tend to have an unhealthy focus on women’s bodies either way.
Now, I sympathize with this skinny chick as one who used to be a skinny chick myself and hated all the barely-veiled vicious remarks from women who weighed more than I did (which tended to come more from American than desi peers – especially the “you’re eating that?” and “I hate you, you can eat anything”). Having said that, her BMI is low enough that for no other than health reasons I’d feel uncomfortable holding her body type up as an ideal.
Erm, I think that’s what disqualified the original winner and gave the Preeti the crown.
Correct, but I saw a news item on one of the desi satellite channels (probably Star News, I can’t remember) profiling her when she won, and she was quoted as saying she’d be open to the option. I’m assuming she meant in the long-term, after her current period as Miss GB has expired.
Ah, I see you’re the latest victim of the obfuscating power of Times of India.
Shruti, do you (or your family) speak Bhojpuri?
Just two comments to add:
First, BMI is only one measure of potential health risk. Yes, a person outside of the bell curve on either end is statistically more likely to suffer health problems, but there are other factors that need to be taken into account..
Second, has anyone ever done a study of height distribution in India? I honestly don’t think it’s that different from what a European distribution would be. That’s just based on personal observation. And there are certainly very tall indians. In my generation in my family, I’ve got 5 male cousins over 6 feet tall (the tallest is 6’6″, I pull up the rear at 6’1″) and most of the females of my generation are over 5’8″. So tall populations do exist.
perfect hair, toned body..she is stunning. Just like the song goes in Kal Ho na ho, “Go G.U.J.J.U”.
I am a big fan of Laalu
Actually that is what the original winner claims, that she lost the crown because she posed for Playboy however the truth is that she had a relationship with one of the judges that was discovered later and hence disqualified.
(Can we please run the following experiment: Let’s try in this thread to avoid terms like “hitting it” or “I’d do her” or other puerile sexist crap. Thanks.)
Thank you Siddhartha!
Congratulations to Preeti!
Man, this post doesn’t matter to me as much as it apparently does to some other commenters, but I wanted to respond to this. The reason you are writing about her is the fact that she won a beauty contest. There are a million other Desi women with “complex career ambitions”, and “devotion to one’s mother” is practically genetically encoded in Desi culture. That’s not why she’s a newsworthy figure. She’s a newsworthy figure because a bunch of judges thought she looked nice in a swimsuit and heels. The picture you posted of her shows her in a bikini, not a powersuit. The link goes to a page of pictures of her model shots (the “complex career ambitions” referenced above).
And, I mean, that’s totally ok. She won. Awesome. The judges think she’s “beautiful” (whatever that means). Awesome. Other people on this site think she’s smoking hot. Awesome. Fashion designers think she’s sexy enough to sell their clothes. Awesome. I personally don’t see it. That’s not dissection, or an attempt to attack her, or an attempt to say what anyone else should think. That’s just my personal opinion. And it’s not like my opinion regarding her “hottness” would ever be, shall we say, relevant anyway. But let’s not pretend that posting an article about a beauty queen has nothing to do with her looks.
Neal, weren’t you moved by the fact that she won the pageant because her mother was ill? And that she’s developed from being a beauty worker to a fireworks entrepreneur to a budding real estate mogul? I mean, if that’s not living the desi dream (work hard to bring honor to your family, make lots of money) I don’t know what is!
p.s. Clearly I need an emoticon that shows when I’m being sarcastic.
D’oh!
Tell it brother! And I guess this is what was so irksome at some of the other arguments. She won for her body (yeah yeah among other lesser important things) but we shouldn’t really talk about it because you know it’s rude and all and it might hurt her feelings. She’s planning on being in Playboy, I’m sure there will be websites dedicated to discussing every inch of her privates. Oh yeah and we are fat cows that are jealous of her skinniness! serious eyerolling
I think if the straight guys on this blog were given a choice between Ms. Desai above and Ms. Akhtar (the EPA employee in the tiger stripes), we’d choose the latter overwhelmingly. Guys may be pigs, but this thin is hardly our ideal.
Well yeah. That and the polytheistic religious traditions condition us into being furries…
interestingly, audrey hepburn was only one inch shorter than miss desai and 110 pounds, yet she is considered a universal beauty icon (gamine) and most people don’t complain about her thinness or her unhealthy effect on beauty standards (she herself said she had a problem with her weight her whole life because of difficult circumstances during WWII). some people just have slight frames and are slim no matter what. i’m sure miss desai keeps her slimness artificially a little lower than what her normal weight would be, given her profession, but she doesn’t look the type who would be significantly larger in size if she wasn’t a model.
looking at fashion magazines today and the runway, underweight and haggard looking models are indeed a problem and they seem to have a prejudice against voluptuous women with figures most women (and men) would love and that actually flatter the clothing instead of acting as a coathanger for it, but i don’t see the above lady as falling into that extreme category.
BMI! Come on people! She is a gorgeous girl and once more there is a brownie in the news! I am just happy that I can say, Hey! Ms GB is Guju, you can keep Ash Southie pals! 🙂
JoaT,
Just because someone gives you an opportunity to kick ’em, it doesn’t mean you should take it, know what I mean ? 😉
I’m not saying this applies to you or anyone else on this thread, but I’m sure you know that some people would indeed be motivated by such jealousy.
While we’re on this subject, I’ve also recently begun to suspect that the reason a lot of desi aunties reflexively (is that a real word ? It is now) denigrate some younger-generation desi women for being “too skinny” (even though it’s not necessarily true in many cases) is because it’s driven by their own feelings of jealousy and self-consciousness about their own excess weight.
wgiia, make that point on the other thread 😉
CinamonRani, are you implying that Ms. GB is as good looking as Ash?!?!?! I beg to differ. But, to each his/her own.
No? Awwww where’s the fun? 🙂
OK BUT that is like bringing up the price of oil in Serbia when you are talking about the price of vegetables in London. There were all of 4 women talking about this issue at the time the statement was made, MD, me, NinaP & ANNA. All of the discussions were informative and respectful and out of true concern about the image of women which is bound to be up for discussion in a thread like this.
It’s irritating as hell nevermind an insult to these women when someone drops the ‘oh you are just catty’ bomb in the middle of it. A big ole “well F you I’ll just disregard your POV cause you are a jealous cow’ would have sufficed instead. Lets not sugarcoat exactly how that came about. It was out of line and not warranted in that discussion at that time.
Dude all the aunties I’ve ever known are forever bent on the younger women losing weight even if they are emaciated and it all boils down to “lose weight or a man won’t find you attractive to marry you” so I can’t say I know too many aunties who hate skinny chicks. Even the uber fat ones are telling their daughters to eat less.
Not at all Sriram, I wouldnt dream of comparing anyone to Ms Rai. I just meant that the guju’s finally get a beauty queen! 🙂
LOL
Why do some desi guys refuse to get rid of the unibrows? How can it possibly get any worse with montly waxing/threading?
p.s. You can’t take a step without bumping into a Guju…they’re everywhere.
The problem with “skinny” Indian girls or “skinny” girls in general is that they don’t look fit. They just look “skinny”. It’s a question of personal taste, but I prefer the “fitness model” physique (i.e. muscular thighs, buns, strong calves, legs to die for, toned arms, etc.) to a rack of bones…..
….maybe I’m just not “white-washed” enough to find that “look” attractive. I prefer the Melyssa Ford type. Where are the Indian girls that are into weight training?
Tell ’em brother. Many women seem to be insecure because they think that magazines and beauty contests brainwash us menfolk but they don’t get the fact that evolution and instincts are a much stronger brainwasher. In the end men will be most attracted to those women that we subconsciously know will bare us the healthiest children. The subconscious criteria we use is slightly different for each man of course. Thus, the true measure of a woman’s physical beauty (as judged by us) is how healthy she is (proper diet and exercise) not how skinny she is or how big her breasts are. Men are judged by women on similar merits of “fitness” for siring offspring.
Another thing to consider here are market forces. So often I hear from women that magazines and the media unfairly thrust upon the masses an image of women that is unrealistic an damaging. If that is the case then why does the market allow such a situation to continue? Wouldn’t women (the main consumers of such magazines) simply stop buying them and force the marketplace to accommodate a more realistic ideal of a woman’s beauty? I have heard that market studies show that WOMEN and not MEN are the ones whose purchasing habits dictate that “skinny” women will continue to be used as models. Women don’t buy magazines with “normal” looking women on the cover. I’ll bet you that the Victoria’s Secret special (filled with tall waifs) last night was viewed by way more women than men. I didn’t even know about it until I read the comments here.
Getting personal for a moment (for illustrative purposes), I am most attracted to very fit women who I know work out quite often (and properly) and eat really healthy. That is because this combination best matches my lifestyle and the lifestyle I want for my future children. Thus I would not be attracted to a waif who couldn’t climb a mountain with me, nor would I be attracted to an overweight woman, who couldn’t climb a mountain with me. Most men I know don’t want to hear that a women they are interested in diets to keep her weight down. They do like to hear that the woman takes care of her health by making the gym and fruits a priority. Big biceps on a girl are more sexy to me than big breasts. By the same token men shouldn’t get a pass on this either. If your man sits on the couch drinking beer and playing Madden ’07 all day, chances are that he won’t be able to save your future children from the saber tooth cat stalking them. Dump him girl.
Abhi this is disingenuous. Go to the magazine aisle and tell me how many “good” magazines you can find without super skinny women on them. While the market may be influenced by trends, the whole purpose of marketing is to sell someone something they don’t need, whether that is a product, a lifestyle, or a (body) image.
interesting you should say that, Jane (#184) because i was just thinking that my experience and my mother’s experience has been very similar to what you just described. thinness is to be valued above almost all else (except of course, professional training and sexual purity) before a woman is married. after that, well…. you’re married, so it doesn’t matter that much, does it?
in all the discussion about whether Miss GB is too thin or not or who suffers worse, the thin or the fat, i’d be curious to know how much culture plays a role in her appearance. certainly its to be expected that she’d be thin; an informal survey of contestants reveals that there aren’t a lot of fat women entering beauty pageants nowadays, much less winning them. but the larger question that interests me is that really who she is? and if not, what might have pushed her to look that way. for the record, i do think she is beautiful, in a bollywood sort of way. but beautiful nonetheless. and i am a mite jealous of her looks, but only because she has a long torso… i’m just imagining how well shirts would fit me!
ahem… anyway, my question arose out of thinking back to comments that were made to me as a child visiting india and stories my mom told me about her childhood there. the insult “jaddi” (that’s basically fattie in gujurati) is tossed around liberally, as if it had no effect on her or me. huge pressure to lose weight before marriage–to the point that my mom was eating only one meal a day. and, the cycle repeated itself with me– my mom actually told the sari salesman not to bring out certain saris because i “had a big body.” nice.
its nice that Miss GB went out and won the crown for her mom, but i’d be interested to know how much “our” culture played a part in created an ideal vs. the beauty pageant culture itself. short of asking Miss GB to go into therapy, i’m not sure how i’d find out.
It is not at all disingenuous. Those magazines don’t exist because YOU don’t want them. Why would the magazine industry be the SOLE industry to say “screw you” to market forces? If what you are saying is correct I could start a magazine with normal looking women on the cover tomorrow and I’d be an instant magazine tycoon.
Can one of you econ geeks chime in here? Vinod? Paging Vinod?
Like Starbucks.
JoaT,
Yes, but bear in mind that most people here don’t know any of the ladies you’ve listed offline. Unless they’ve managed to gain an accurate picture of these individuals’ personalities due to extensive visits to SM over a long period of time, or know them in the “real world”, they won’t know that there isn’t necessarily any jealousy involved here and they will be giving the ladies concerned the benefit of the doubt (or not, as the case may be) about their motivations. (I’ve occasionally been on the receiving end of negative assumptions too as you recall).
For example, if someone is short, and they are heard to be making remarks specifically about tall people which could be construed as disparaging, then others will consider the possibility that it’s motivated by jealousy — unless they know the person concerned sufficiently well already and/or evidence is presented to the contrary. Just human nature.
It’s not their own daughters who they’re criticising…..
Camille
Probably not the Vogue type, although FHM, Maxim etc have models which are obviously not “waifs” and in some cases fit the curvy-but-fit description given by Abhi above.
Abhi, I think the point is, that magazines catering to women (especially “mainstream”, read: caucasian) women in the west depict the ideal as tall skinny waifs…
Whereas magazines catering to men (maxim, playboy, king, smooth, etc.) typically aren’t showing the same type of women…….they’re more apt to show the vida guererra, melyssa ford type than a kate moss
Neither types of women are “normal” and in the case of the latter, that is very unfortunate but there’s obvious disconnect between the average man’s ideal female physique versus the one presented to women.
Abhi, I have an econ training also, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore the reality on the ground in favor of a market model. This is not some simple supply/demand chart where the supply is magazines with anorexic models and the demand is overweight women who want to stare at skinny women.
Also, FHM, Maxim, etc., are men’s lifestyle magazines. Aside from the fact that their articles are often incredibly sexist and chauvinistic, they’re also selling a particular lifestyle. Additionally, the women featured in their magazines are featured for their “sex kitten” status. I would rather read an intelligent article about someone’s life than something about their major turn ons.
Correct, and I’d argue that is because women find the waifs to be more idealistic while men find the Vida types’s to be more ideal for bearing children. In both cases market forces would change this if it wasn’t true. The magazines aren’t TELLING us who to like however.
Here I’d disagree. Neither type falls at the mean body shape of a woman. I wouldn’t use the word “normal.” However, as I mentioned yesterday, because of the worldwide obesity epidemic the mean is on a sliding scale these days. Also, I’d change your phrase “presented to women” to “consumed by women.”
If what you are saying is correct I could start a magazine with normal looking women on the cover tomorrow and I’d be an instant magazine tycoon.
there are some of those. they are a niche, right?
Who the hell talks/writes like that? (a rhetorical question considering this guy probably spends most of his life online)
Getting back to the pic, yes she is fly, in a typical itsy bitsy waist and big breast sort of way. Good job linking to the lingerie pics man.
But YOU aren’t their target consumer. Men don’t care to read an intelligent article about the life of some girl who is too hot to ever look at them twice. They want a sex kitten to look at. For the “intelligent girl article” I go to National Geographic Adventure and I drool at the amazing writer who kayaked down the Nile and who I just might have a shot at.
A paleontologist who studies evolution.
yeah, that is lame. My mom does that to my sister often and I always feel really uncomfortable. I try to say more encouraging things sometimes but I can’t always because a) always telling my sister that she’s hot makes me feel EVEN MORE uncomfortable and b) my mom always says it in a teasing-on-the-square way, so if I do it too much I come off as humorless and self-righteous.