Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Beauty as an Armour

There are curious accusations that swarm around Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s stardom. These essentially boil down to a charge: Even though Rai has a pulse on what are some of the surface qualities of a star, the substance beneath — you know, the craft, or any endearing idiosyncrasy — would crumble once the beauty is separated from it.

Rai proliferated every Indian living room with a fizzle. “I said you have to seduce five men in this room,” Prahlad Kakkar recalled in an interview, on the direction he gave Rai during the famous Pepsi advertisement that marked her arrival on the Indian entertainment scene. She appeared in wet, tousled hair; a distinctive red lipstick that contrasted with her green eyes, and seductively asked Aamir Khan’s character if there was one more Pepsi bottle. It was a face that could launch a thousand whitening creams in post-liberalisation India, it was a mythology of beauty and modernity that had begun to collect sway around itself even before its outsized exposure to celluloid.

‘She is too beautiful’

When she entered the 1994 Femina Miss India contest, rumours swirled that as many as 25 contestants withdrew their names once they caught a whiff of her interest in the pageant. (In an interview much, much later, Sushmita Sen — who would eventually emerge as the winner — disclosed that she had quivered at the prospect of competing against Rai, too. “Bohot khoobsurat hai bhai (she is too beautiful, man),” Sen retorted.) When Sen and Rai would win their respective world titles, they would be given a diplomat’s welcome in the National Capital Region: Paraded around the length of the city, suggesting that the victories had spilled over from their personal realm of success to assume the shape of something much bigger in a globalised economy. 

Here was a beauty that travelled the cultural distance far enough to imply that we could accommodate women wearing swimsuits on an international platform, and stretch our notion of what we can take pride in — not just the Hindu, upper-caste notions of protecting a woman’s sexual virtue. That we could rip open our convictions to imported stereotypes of modernity as well as glossy shampoos. Rai would go from the femme fatale male fantasy of the Pepsi ad to monopolising women’s fantasies, by holding out the impossible hope of acquiring her brand of beauty by purchasing the right soap, like Lux, or shampoo, like L’Oreal (the latter, eventually, also launched her upon the international stage and laid out the Cannes red carpet for her). 

The market share of  foreign cosmetic products from Revlon, Oriflame, L’Oreal, Maybelline grew by 25% during the late Nineties — a historic feat. Rai may not have had anything to do with this market growth directly, but she was a respectable cog in its wheel, embodying an ideal femininity that conformed to the  contemporary demand of idealising Western beauty and celebrated consumerism. 

To bludgeon the obvious point across: Rai was not just beautiful — she was gorgeous. Many have resorted to exclaiming, designer Tarun Tahiliani for one, that their logical ability to think is compromised in her presence. The film projects she took on — her most memorable collaborations have arguably been with Mani Ratnam and Sanjay Leela Bhansali — invariably utilised this external truth and purposed it into the narrative. 

Tradition as a Contrast 

An Iruvar (1997), a Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), a Devdas (2002), a Cannes jury member honour (2003), a Time magazine cover (2003), a few flops — if Aishwarya Rai the model was an unchallenged queen, the actor encountered subtle and impolite resistance. It’s evident from her choices that Rai was intent upon being seen as a serious actor and commercially viable heroine from the very beginning. She chose to work with filmmakers who were known for their artistic grandeur and distinctive choices. Devdas’s Paro as Rai played it was an incandescent contrast to the newer notion of a desirable woman peddled through her advertisements, in her saris and with her Rapunzel-esque long hair. The good girl in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam chose her Indian husband over the temptation of an (Indian) Italian lover. In Taal (1999), she was the modern folk singer, who is willing to go West for professional reasons without losing sight of Indian traditions.  

How much of Rai’s appearance would account for the credit she deserves as an actor, given what her beauty could do to celluloid?  In 2003, when she would be announced as one of the youngest jury member at Cannes, the raspings about her credibility as an actor would become louder, and her facial features — palatable to a Western audience — would be chalked up to be a significant reason she was being acknowledged to such a degree. 

The Tag of ‘Ice Maiden’

These criticisms were mixed with the frustration of another unmet demand: to pull the curtain and offer personal anecdotes that could humanise her. Culture journalists referred to Rai as the “Ice Maiden” for notoriously guarding her private life. (The term, retrospectively, feels sexist.) An ex-colleague, a veteran reporter, would also disclose that even procuring an interview could prove to be an onerous task. Rai would divulge digestible details about her parents’ emphasis on academics (she has a degree in architecture), having a normal upbringing, and being the only one in the family to pursue a career in showbiz. This self-consciousness and obsession with the ‘good girl’ persona would chafe at some. Take this scathing promulgation into account: “She remains a glittering icon, more symbolic than real, defined entirely by how she looks,” wrote Lakshmi Chaudhry in a piece for Business Standard. 

These charges feel unfair, though. It is  an odd beef to have with a celebrity — to pit their beauty against their craft, as though the two can only pull at each other. As if beauty cannot viscerally move you;  as if in the case of Rai, the beauty is a superficial detail to be dismissed rather than a quality that played a key part in how we reckon with women’s bodies and the moral anxiety that surged post-1991, as the Indian economy opened up and Indian society found itself beset with novelties. Rai was never going to pass as an everywoman. Instead, she became an example of a truly incredible India, one who can stand comfortably at the cusp of West and East, of modernity and tradition, coveted by everyone but singular (and therefore autonomous) because of her extraordinary beauty.

Persona vs Person

Rai approaches her stardom with the energy of a haloed student with a homework assignment, and the front-bencher energy doesn’t translate to becoming endearing: She is very proper in interviews — a behavioural legacy of her beauty pageant roots perhaps — and the effort at performing in a ‘correct’ way is visible, even during the charming moments like when she draped a saree around the jeans-clad Oprah, or rebutted the somewhat ignorant David Letterman. The standard but shiny platitudes, delivered with giggles in her interviews, slash the possibility for emotional intimacy and instead emphasise that what we see is a persona rather than a person. Her stardom is a different shade from Shah Rukh Khan’s — the passion for his work is bolstered by his interviews where he is witty and vulnerable. His fans make a pilgrimage to Mannat as if it were something sacred, and it is hard to imagine that thumping passion for Rai. 

Yet there is a refreshing irreverence in how she has not heeded to any of the criticisms, especially when it comes to opening up about her private life. When she was relatively new to the world of show business, she saw how little she benefited from the scandals that erupted as a result of her private life being glimpsed by the press, and Rai has since been staunchly protective of her privacy.  

A few awkward Hollywood forays like Bride and Prejudice (2004)  Pink Panther 2 (2009), a high-profile marriage, a Jodhaa Akbar (2008), childbirth and fat-shaming at Cannes, an Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016), and two Ponniyan Selvans later — where the potential for her beauty to resonate has been maximised — its evident there is no intention here of veering away from roles that factor her indisputable beauty. Since her beauty pageant days, Rai has had a pulse on what it means for a woman’s body to be a contesting (and contested) territory — just pay attention to the number of times she brings up what is ‘expected’ of her in interviews. She shares frankly how she is carrying the responsibility of translating  India’s culture on Western platforms like American talk shows and international film festivals. She seems to understand that representing an idea can sometimes come at the cost of putting your interiority forward. Ideas can be neat, interiority is not and Aishwarya Rai has no time for the messy humanity of conventional celebrityhood. 

There is perhaps a sense of loss for those who see her, for her fans, when one cannot humanise Rai, but only adore her. Perhaps being otherworldly enables more respite for a female superstar.