BuzzFix: Why Sabyasachi's Unsmiling Models Have Left Indian Men With Bleeding Hearts

You would think that a Sabyasachi model, if anyone, would be exempt from criticism from the male gaze but alas, your garden variety sexism on Desi social media is a gift that keeps on giving. The male gaze has so far been unable to make up its mind on what the ideal woman looks like: on the one hand, they like ’em all sad, subdued, tremulous and always slightly tearful à la Aditi Rao Hydari in most movies; on the other, they can’t quite handle a woman looking sombre and unlike the standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

For the male gaze, women can only exist as tropes. The Cool Girl. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The Dead Girl. The Slightly Chubby Best Friend Of The Hero’s Girl. To top it off, in India, beauty standards are a direct reflection of class, caste and internalised racism. A fair-skinned model may escape criticism, thanks to her complexion (unless, of course, she commits cardinal sins like not wearing a bindi or stepping out in a pair of shorts). It’s another story if you happen to be dark-skinned and dare to become a Sabyasachi model and maintain a neutral-to-jaded expression.

Tweet after tweet, mostly from Indian men, calls Sabyasachi models “widows”, “depressed”, “rudaalis”; one says, “These days it’s hard to say if the model is male or female. The days of the beautiful woman model are over. Secondly, many of the ad agency types are from two woke states where people in general aren’t good looking. So they impose models in their own likeness.” No points for guessing the kind of women who are most likely to give Indian men heartburn.

Rudaalis- some of the most marginalised people in Indian society- are professional mourners who are hired to lament deaths in affluent, upper-caste families in Rajasthan. Most of these women, belonging to marginalised castes, live in abject poverty and are denied personhood throughout their lives.

It’s clear that it’s not really a Sabyasachi model who has upset Indian men’s sense of aesthetics; rather, it’s what the model may be representing with her skin colour, her demeanour, and even her gaze. Patriarchy doesn’t dare look into the eyes of a woman and see its crimes staring back at it, unsmiling.

The fashion industry, at any rate, is the last place where you would want to go looking for intersectional feminism. Sabyasachi, for his part, is known for designing wedding attires for Bollywood brides and perhaps isn’t someone who is looking to go much beyond the “girlboss” variety of feminism. A model is meant to sell you something and they can’t do that if you’re focusing on their face instead of the object they’re selling.

No one can pretend that a typical fashion designer chooses models for any kind of altruistic purpose in an industry that profits off of women’s insecurities and the top 1 percent’s desire to set themselves apart by acquiring more and more outlandish property (think haute couture). It renders the whole issue in ironic light: Indian men on Twitter are threatened by a phenomenon that isn’t even challenging their patriarchal ideals in the first place. At this point, they seem to be wrestling with their own demons.

Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, for instance, believes that a recent ad-spread featuring “lifeless, sad & depressed” Sabyasachi models actually “[mimics] sad, drugged & depressed lifestyle of the West”. “Pl celebrate India, our festivals, our culture and above all life,” he adds in his tweet. Ever since placing a mangalsutra on a model wearing lingerie (in an ad that was since withdrawn), Sabyasachi Mukherjee has faced criticism along similar lines.

One can’t be sure what kind of life you could lead to be perpetually frothing at the mouth with incessant joyfulness. Or if such a life was ever envisioned as an integral part of Indian culture. If it was, for argument’s sake, then maybe that isn’t a culture worth saving.

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