I’m not the type to really follow New York Fashion Week (all bout L.A.!) but an article at Jezebel caught my eye.
There were 116 labels that held shows at the recently ended New York fashion week; that’s 3,697 spots in runway and presentation lineups. Of those, 668 were given to models of color — which, at just over 18%, is 6% better than one year ago. (And certainly better than in the fall of 2007, when WWD reported that one-third of the New York shows used no models of color at all.)[Jezebel]
The blog did further analysis breaking down the 668 models of color by race (41% Black models, 38% Asian models, 22% Latin models.) I know what you are thinking – where the Desi at? Using the nifty Desi Filter, I searched the names of the models of color in the top 25 shows in New York’s Fashion Week, just to see if the increased diversity included ‘our’ kind of diversity.
And the winner is, drum roll please…Lakshmi Menon is the only Desi model reppin’ on the runway at New York’s Fashion Week. Lakshmi appeared in the shows of Alexander Wang, Badgley Mishka, Carolina Herrera, Diane von Furstenberg, and Jason Wu. Looks like Padma needs to beware – there’s a new Lakshmi in town.
Who is Lakshmi? Born in Bangalore in 1981, she started modeling in 2006 and signed with Ford Agency. She is known for her “pout” and is seen as a “rising star.”
Tall and dark— in many ways, Lakshmi Menon is the typical ‘Indian’ beauty. But in many other ways, she’s as unconventional as they come. With a strong jaw line and endless legs, Menon is global fashion’s latest muse. She’s walked the ramp for biggies like Hermes, Jean Paul Gaultier, Issey Miyake, Stella McCartney, Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors.[Express India]
She has a short video diary from fashion week where you can catch her gorgeous accent. She also thinks you should visit Ladakh.
The good news: we had sexy, dark and lovely Lakshmi as our token brown skinned girl on New York Fashion Week’s runways. The bad news: Out of 3,697 spots, they couldn’t find another brown girl to step on to the runway? How is that possible? Desi girls are HOT. Have they seen the picture of Padma on a swing? Or Sunny getting out the vote? Or the desi cover girls on Indian Vogue, Indian Elle, or Indian Cosmopolitan? When in Delhi last month I spent hours in front of the magazine rack enamored by seeing beautiful brown women as cover girls. We have great potential desi supermodels, despite what ANTM may have us believe.
It’s great that the runways were more diverse this time around, but as far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t diverse enough. They can do better next time. As for now, I’ll take Lakshmi as our token, any day. Both Padma and Menon.
as noted by others very few on even this board brag about how dark skinned or broad featured they are 😉 small, dark & broad nosed doesn’t seem to be part of the canons of beauty.
I dunno, there were some stunning Tamil girls at college that changed my perceptions a lot. We are pre-conditioned with a whole lot of biases which can be distorting. Increasingly the conventional standards I find don’t do justice to the variety of beauty that reall exists.
Considering the fact that 50% of the bloggers on this site are women and over or near 30, it is disturbing to see the number blog posts on this site objectifying South Asian women. It is depressing to see how predominantly desi women from the entertainment world are highlighted on this blog (this latest exoticized and fetishized concept of an Indian woman), yet the men featured here are almost always bankers, politicians, doctors, or comedians.
I understand buying into the male discourse when you are 16, but at middle age, really, it is unacceptable. There are two posts just on this page–this one and Padma Lakshmi. Earlier it was F. Pinto. There are no posts, interestingly enough, on Dev Patel.
I realize that Asian men are marginalized in U.S. media while Asian women are feticized (hence the madness over Pinto who was barely in the movie and a cursory acknowledgment of Dev), but does this brown blog have to do so as well?
Why are there all these brown men in this thread and in the Padma thread talking about Indian women as statistics, skin color, etc.
Why are there no posts on desi women who are doctors, professors, etc., and about whom we can discuss without turning her into an object of whomever’s concept of beauty?
What about the coverage of Sonal Shah, who’s prominent in banking, Obama team, and VHP-A? 😉
Why are there no posts on desi women who are doctors, professors, etc., and about whom we can discuss without turning her into an object of whomever’s concept of beauty?
Well the thread is about physical perceptions of beauty; it is a bit odd to start complaining that there isn’t discussion of other qualities of women. And as for the discourse about how men talk about women – this is how pretty much all single men under 40 talk about women in the abstract, regardless of whichever culture, background they come from etc. It has very little to do with the men on here being ‘brown’ as opposed to just being men.
I read the discussion differently, there are certain ideal of physical beauty, within Indian culture, many of which lead to a ridiculous amount of stereotyping and prejudice. One of the things I am pleased to see is that these old stereotypes are slowly eroding. Whether we like it or not too much emphasis gets placed on certain notions of beauty within Indian culture and I think this is problematic. There is also a heavy stress of physical appearance, especially for women, that puts a lot of burden on them. Rather than pretending that we can move beyond this by ignoring physical appearances or repressing discussion of them by concentrating on other features; I am more interested to see how such conceptions vary across different communities and change over time.
If you want to get on your high horse and complain about ‘objectifying’ women, I am happy to join you; but I think you are missing the target here.
hence the madness over Pinto who was barely in the movie and a cursory acknowledgment of Dev
??? is dev that hawt?
That may be true but I don’t think Punjabis are significantly more attractive than other ethnicities. IMO anyway.
What are you talking about, punjabi’s are the best looking people ever, and women of all races are week to punjabi man’s back hair.
Conrad Barwa, I think you are missing MY point. Look at the images of desi men just on the front page of the blog–suited, looking professional. And the desi women? They are sultry, half naked, and pouting.
Note the irony here in your comments:
How about instead of worrying about how “Indian culture” views women, worry about how “ridiculous amount of stereotyping and prejudice” is created by how “pretty much all single men under 40 talk about women.” Like your attempts to redefine standard of beauty for desi woman are any less stereotypical or harmful?
Both women featured in blogs are terrible models for any concept of beauty. Both present terrible body images for women of any race anywhere on the planet. So now we are idealizing the tall and skeletal (western standard of beauty) for Indian women? That’s your concept of liberation of women from prejudice? So now the western fashion industry’s pick for beauty is better than Indians’ pick for beauty? The very same western fashion industry that shame girls into feeling fat or ugly? Really? Seriously?
You can redefine the conversation about skin color all you want, but the reality is that there is a bunch of desi men talking about the hawtness of a desi woman. That’s all this conversation is really about.
I think the rare female voice on this post has also commented on how often there are posts focusing on desi female’s looks. I don’t think I am not alone in finding this worrisome and sad.
Nilufar:
i recall reading susan faludi’s backlash and thinking: this whole damn book is about how there are people in the world who actually disagree with susan faludi. page after page she appears gobsmacked that there are people who don’t share her world view, and the only explanation she can see for it is that they are misogynists. even liberal popular sitcoms, like 30 something, were somehow viewed as anti-woman and the failure to see them as such as some vague conspiracy in need of explanation.
but the explanation to her and to you is that not everyone shares you world view. what is painfully obvious to you, that the uneven objectification of women is a sign of sexism, is not to others. to them, it may be just a sign of nature, or endless other possibilities. the issue is unresolved, but i think the tendency for progressive thinkers is to see every issue pertaining to race and gender thru the prism of certainty: as in “how can a poc support apartheid?”
having said that, i like the way you resolve the issue by suggesting a further objectification of men. i spend half my time trying to get chicks to do that to me. feminist am i.
do you know what it is called?
Wow. I cannot imagine how parents can hate their own children for their looks. If that is not the height of racial self-loathing I don\’t know what is. How contemptible
59 · the good name please said
They are called tikkas (or tikli in Bangla)–and most South Asian (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, India) brides wear them. Go to any website selling Pakistani (or Indian) wedding jewellery, and you will find them. Ebay has “tribal” versions of them–search for belly dancing and head dress, and you will get hits.
59 · the good name please said
Also, another term is mattha pathi or matha patti (or variations of it).
Here are some different examples: http://shijifashion.blogspot.com/2008/11/13.html
(also search for Pakistani wedding jewelry if you need more info)
I think you are missing MY point. Look at the images of desi men just on the front page of the blog–suited, looking professional. And the desi women? They are sultry, half naked, and pouting.
I got your point just fine, I simply think it is misdirected. Not sure what you are talking about vis-a-vis the pictures here, I only see the ones of Menon in the original post.
Like your attempts to redefine standard of beauty for desi woman are any less stereotypical or , harmful?
Actually I haven’t tried to redefine any standard of beauty for South Asian women; it isn’t up to me (or you for that matter) to define what is beautiful or not since these should be matters of personal taste as opposed to social conditioning, which IS my point. My observations related to the fact that conceptions of beauty have become less stereotypical from what I have seen amongst the Indian communities I am familiar with.
So now we are idealizing the tall and skeletal (western standard of beauty) for Indian women? That’s your concept of liberation of women from prejudice? So now the western fashion industry’s pick for beauty is better than Indians’ pick for beauty? The very same western fashion industry that shame girls into feeling fat or ugly? Really? Seriously?
I am sorry but WHAT? Where I have ever said that the Western standard for beauty (which you claim to be tall and skeletal) is what should be idealised for Indian women or that this some form of liberation?! If you actually bothered to read my comments, instead of being too eager to express your outrage, you would see what I am saying is actually the reverse. My point was, which is what pleasantly surprised me about India, is that there is less emphasis on what is considered to be traditional good looks for Indian women especially as regarding skin tone, height etc. I find the great pressure that used to exist for girls to be fair-skinned and of a certain build quite retrogressive and distasteful for a number of reasons. How from this you jump to claiming that I am standardising “Western notions of beauty” is a little bit beyond me.
You can redefine the conversation about skin color all you want, but the reality is that there is a bunch of desi men talking about the hawtness of a desi woman. That’s all this conversation is really about.
Ok, that might be what this conversation is about for you, it isn’t what it is about for me. Like I said earlier it is about how concepts of beauty change over time. The original post was also about an Indian model and her looks, I merely disagreed with a point made about the look demonstrated was meant to represent idealised views of Indian beauty, which it doesn’t.
In a discussion of models and actors/actresses it is perhaps unsurprising that their “hotness” will be commented on. This is obvious since how they look and how attractive they are play an important role in their careers. If you would rather that the obvious not be commented on then that is fair enough, but it is hardly the main substance of the conversation as you claim – at least as far as I am concerned.
I think the rare female voice on this post has also commented on how often there are posts focusing on desi female’s looks. I don’t think I am not alone in finding this worrisome and sad.
I don’t read SM much so I can’t comment much about this; most of my interests lie elsewhere. The vast majority of times I read Indian/NRI blogs it is usually on issues of politics, economics, society, art etc. Not so much on fashion or the relative attractiveness of Indian women (or indeed women in general). If this is a trend and it bothers you, I would suggest rather than castigating people who comment on here infrequently, it might be better to direct your attention to those who actually decide the selection of the posts put up.
Nilufar, I like the fact that in a world of donkeys, (pompous) asses, Pintos and Paints , there are some who choose the high horse. The higher you are the further away from the horse manure you can get.
Nothing is funnier than the stallion wannabe who ends up acting like a colt. No, even the dwarfed miniatures can hold their own with the mares.
I’m going to jump here in defence of not just SM but the regular junta. I’m unclear whether you are new to SM but this post if anything is a rarity. This blog is about the diaspora and the fashion world is no exception. There would be 50 posts about politics, history, authors, movies, accomplishments of desi women Indra Nooyi here and Indira Nooyi here but the minute one post goes up regarding beauty there is always someone that overlooks the other 50 and gets offended.
If the post is about beauty and the fashion industry what would you prefer people discuss? Here are a few posts objectifying men if want to talk about leveling the playing field. Uber hotness Sendhil. Sexy Sikh men.
The thing is IT’S ok to talk about beauty and aesthetics. You might be offended by Laxmi Menon’s body because she’s tall and skinny but I ask why? She’s by no means average hence she’s in a business that pays her for that body and look. Concepts of beauty and attraction and our fascination towards it as a race isn’t going to change. Empowering women and feminism isn’t about suppressing men and their natural instincts. You make is sound like we are still living in the dark ages. It’s not so fatalistic.
Satya Oblet (sp?) is a famous male model who I believe was born in Pondicherry and was adopted by French parents.
I love beauty. I love looking at beautiful people. I fixate on people who ooze sex appeal. I’m as guilty of objectifying people (men and women) as the next person. I actually think that the discussion at hand (aesthetic standards in an increasingly multicultural world–what does that mean for diaspora South Asians and South Asians in South Asia alike?) is really quite fascinating. What bothers me is the fact that women are disproportionately judged and, more often than not, found lacking according to some of the exacting standards that some of us have. Perhaps I’m too new to SM to be dispensing unilateral critiques, but while I can’t name any specifics, the posts that single out gorgeous women only to verbally stomp them into the ground have stuck with me. By no means is this unique to the SM community. I think that in order to have a discussion about evolving standards of beauty, we also need to be at least somewhat interrogative of some of the negative, even at times misogynistic, baggage that comes with the way we assess women.
Sendhil and sexy Sikh men…drool…
Dude, seriously? I get that it is not cool to base assessments of beauty on fairness/darkness of skin, but what is with the Punjabi-bashing? I have never seen nearly as many random chip-on-my-shoulder comments on this blog about other states/ethnicities. First, Punjabis come in most shades of brown, except perhaps the very darkest. Look at Parminder Nagra, for example. She’s Punjabi, very pretty, but not “fair.” There are plenty of other examples. Second, there are millions and millions of Punjabis–how can we all “perceive [our]selves as [better looking than other ethnicities].” If other Indians have a chip on their shoulders about looks/skin color, get over it. Every ethnicity should have self-esteem about their capabilities, looks, etc. Don’t blame all Punjabis for other Indians light skin/dark skin hang ups. It hardly adds to the quality of discourse.
“That may be true but I don’t think Punjabis are significantly more attractive than other ethnicities. IMO anyway. right, i just mean that they perceive themselves as such, and i think most other brown ethnicities implicitly accept it.”
Not true. Being a tall fair-skinned Punjabi woman, I find myself envious of my dark-skinned friends, who just so happen to be South Indian. Many times I find that Punjabi women, especially Sikhnis, are far too masculine looking with broad shoulders, long noses and big faces. Don’t get me wrong, I think Punjabi women can be beautiful, but I think South Indians naturally have more defined features and to me that is beautiful.
I reiterate, how does saying the ways you find “Punjabi women, especially Sikhnis” to be unattractive add anything to the discourse? Why not praise beautiful South Indian characteristics without making a generalized slam about a particular ethnic and religious group? And on a South Asian-geared website, where doing so is guaranteed to offend members of that group? It’s just absurd.
.
I agree but I don’t think that’s a desi cultural burden to bear. This is prevalent in all cultures. There are far more gorgeous women in my opinion to oogle at than men and men tend to be more verbal than women in terms of how they react to beauty so that the discussions would always seem like they are leaning more towards criticizing women than men. In my opinion though I’ve noticed more people objectify and obsess over a woman’s beauty rather than tear her down or criticize her. There will always be a few idiots that accomplish that to round off the statistics 🙂
Padma, Freida, and now this model, I don’t find any one of them unusually attractive. Alright looking? Yes. Gorgeous? No. Padma is well kept for a 40 plus woman, but then again, many women keep themselves up well, well into their 50s and even 60s these days. Nothing particularly unusual about that.
Because of your facial features or because of your skin tone?
I’ve developed a technique of picturing people’s faces, (just ordinary people I run into everyday), with different skin tones. If they are brown, I picture them with black, then white skin tones. If they are white, I picture them with brown or black, and black – I picture them with brown or white. If after all the skin tones their features still look good, then I consider them genuinely “good looking”.
Sometimes a person’s skin tone is what is more attractive than their actual facial features. So trying different tones on them can really make it appearant if they are hot or not.
I do this in India with the girls (and dudes) that are considered “sundar” because they are “fair-skinned”, I picture the same girl in the same tones of skin of those who are calling her “sundar”. If she still measures up, she’s beautiful. If not, it just means they are going ga-ga-goo-goo over her light skin tone.
Similarly for those who have a fetish for various shades of brown skin (whether of the Euro, Mediterrenean, Carribean, Latin-American, African or Asian versions). I picture those bronzed “beauties” in whiter shades of pale. If their features still look good in the mind’s eye in another skin tone, then it can be said that they are beautiful.
Otherwise, what is the point of a skin tone fetish? I never got that.
And I give up. Apparently all anyone wants to do while anonymously commenting is to make generalizations that they would not dare say in public in a mixed crowd. That’s true on most websites, but damn, I thought SM had a slightly less obnoxious comment-base.
61 · Nilufar said
I meant Tamil; the craftsmanship of these pieces is different from the North Indian tika. Thanks for trying though.
75 · cain said
we must introduce waxing and threading to the vestern vorld. we have been far too complacent after disseminating zero.
Looks are subjective. europeans find you attractive – desis in india dont. Nothing wrong with that – it is just a personal preference.
rofl. Taz, you are many things but hot – nope you are not. Not by a long shot. Like most of us you are a “typical” desi – Not that there is anything wrong with it.
so do I. since we are talking germany in this post “das fremde ist entspannend” explains many things.
Hmmm, I don’t think that ALL Europeans find me attractive. I just think there’s a broader range of ideas about what is considered attractive in places where a) the population is homogeneous and doesn’t really include you, hence, the exotic factor, and b) the population is heterogeneous and there’s a multiplicity of ideas about what constitutes beauty. In urban areas of Europe (and the U.S.) I didn’t think there was necessarily a fixed concept of beauty. Granted, there are certain overarching cultural precepts that determine what’s considered beautiful (the Heidi Klums and Giselle Bundchens of the world), but this doesn’t always synch up with personal preferences, which often diverge from what is considered palatable in the media.
On my most recent visit to India, a couple people asked me if I was an actress, which was bizarrrrre, as I couldn’t be further from the Bollywood/Kollywood/Tollywood/Mollywood ideal. If I get looked at in India, however, I think it’s more because I’m perceived as “westernized” (even when I don’t try to be, I’m so goddamn transparent) as opposed to attractive. It doesn’t really offend me…not my target audience, anyway. My qualm: I just wish that families didn’t willfully pass on vitriolic cultural sentiments about beauty to their kids.
I hear douchey shit like this ALL THE TIME from Indian people, even the most progressive I’m-more-first-generation-than-you types, without the slightest bit of reservation. It’s largely why I don’t associate with too many of them.
Don’t make me pull this blog over. 🙂
::
I shouldn’t even have to type this, but certain comments (I think “douchey shit” characterizes them well) on this thread are just plain mean. None of us is perfect. We each have hair somewhere we’d prefer we didn’t, we’re too-petite, big-boned, pudgy, scrawny, blemished, frizzy, our split ends have split ends, etc. As we blithely dismiss thousands, if not millions for having noses or shoulders which don’t appeal, bear in mind that what turns you off may just thrill another, and so to each their own. What would it feel like if someone else left similar comments, but the way they defined “ugly” described you? That would suck.
We’re more than our noses, hips, hair and lips. Having said all that, I am now going to gloat that this model is Malayalee. 😀 I’m glad we posted about her. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
This blog seems to be dominated by south-Indians or at least American-Indians of South-Indian origin. That explains the north Indian bashing I guess. I have spent the first 28 years of my life in India and I can tell you that being a punjabi girl, I got chatted up all the time by men in other parts of the country that I have traveled to (Hyderabad, Calcutta, Bombay, other parts of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh). Men have openly told me that the texture of skin of punjabi women is better (whatever that means!) and the sharper nose has been mentioned occasionally. Unfortunately all the south Indian faces that hit the mainstream media seem to be closer to the north indian ideal than what the average south indian looks like. Many big hindi film heroines like Hema Malini, Rekha etc have sharper features than my south indian friends and, at least over time, become whiter and whiter. Deepika Padukone is way darker than what her pictures show. She had been whitened frame by frame in the movie bachna ae hasino, when she was against her bf, ranbir kapoor, who is genuinely white. I went to a big school in Delhi that had kids from every part of the country, and again throughout my school going years, the girl considered prettiest in class happened to belong to a community north of the deccan, though we had lots of malyalee and tamil representation. Lakshmi Menon was a model in her own right in India. She has the height and the body needed for ramp modeling, and as we can see, she photographs very well. South Indian girls work very well for ramp modeling since they tend to be taller than north Indians. In India, ramp modeling has a very fair representation of south indian names. I don’t understand the Frieda Pinto obsession. Maybe westerners find her exotic because of her brown skin tone. She has an average face by any standards in any part of India. Her face is literally a face from the crowd. Padma Lakshmi was never found pretty when she tried to work in India. But she has a great body.
Is that how you console yourself, Melbourne Desi?
Shocking as it may be, Shivani does NOT appear to be a troll.
82 · shivani said
Shivani, this blog is not dominated by anyone besides the curious. Three of this blog’s five founders are of North Indian descent. Also, you may be the first person ever to assert that South Indian girls are taller than their Northern counterparts.
This just in, from a blog(bryanboy) that I follow
http://www.bryanboy.com/bryanboy_le_superstar_fab/2009/03/lakshmi-menon-in-dolce-gabbana-for-dazed-confused-april-2009.html
Ya’ll need to stop this stupidity with calling any certain group ugly or horse faced or transvestites. WTF. I don’t care if you belong to the group. It doesn’t give you impunity to behave like a moron just cause you are a woman and somehow think it’s ok to call other women out because you are the same culture. Granted no two people would have the same idea of beauty but we still expect the two people to not behave like a bunch of Neanderthals. I’m appalled to read such comments from women. What’s wrong with you?
It’s one thing to criticize someone by saying they may not be model material or you don’t find them attractive or you don’t understand the hype behind them or discuss how they are pretty or not compared to other people’s standards till we turn blue in the face etc. But to describe your dislike with such vitriolic adjectives is pathetic. Can’t you describe your disagreements with the standards without resorting to putting down any groups of women?
Would it have hurt to simply say “I’m XYZ and I personally don’t think XYZ women are attractive compared to ABC women.†You are perfectly entitled to your opinion. All the detailed description of why is just plain rude!