Size matters

Ask any woman, there is always a silent competition for the slightest woman in the room. Girls enter a place and immediately get into the math of things: how many women thinner than me, how many fatter?

And if she is the slimmest, there is a self-coronation ceremony on the spot. She is the Queen Bee and the rest are wannabes. She is free to mouth inanities like: ‘I eat too much’, ‘I am so hungry’ and ‘I am fat!’

The last is said to incite listeners into a flurry of ‘You are not!’ but notably females keep mum with only men falling into this silly trap.

The latter will even come home from the party and tell their wives, ‘Imagine, she thinks she is fat!’ The wife then hits him with a heavy object in the room; equal in heaviness, incidentally, to her real weight.

We are told to keep our kilos down and morale up, let our hair down and keep our chin up. In delivery rooms everyone wants the fattest baby. In report cards, students want the highest marks. In saris, the zari border should be microscopic (to be classified as elegant) or of monstrous proportions (to announce prosperity).

Hair should be demurely waist-length or trendily wispy short. Eyebrows should curve delicately in slim arches and sideburns ripped off. Waxing moved on from only-below knees to a full-body job and hair is do or dye.

Obesity is appreciated in quilts, not pillows, in sandwiches, not the bill, in lips, not hips, in snail mail, not sms. Love handles and pot bellies are out; size zero is a real number. And surgeries and lingerie can puff up mammary just as they can shush them down.

‘But Indian men like a handful when it comes to their women’ sounds like sour grapes – in both genders. Women want skyscraper bridegrooms with roly-poly wallets while men hunt up a skinny version of their mother for bride.

It is also said men drive vehicles in direct contrast to their, ahem, size, which by the way says a lot about Delhi men who all have Marutis.

Mika may sing, ‘Big girls, you are beautiful…’ but Hindi films always found the XXL people perfect as jesters. Even now they are introduced slyly as the hero’s or heroine’s pals and made to mouth wisecracks as if to make up for their lack of aesthetic appeal.

A speech too is measured. Should be like a skirt, they say, short enough to intrigue and long enough to cover essentials. Of course this is true only if a woman is wearing it. On men, the skirt better be full length or on a Scotsman.

And to all those psychos who write in to mags that their right breast is larger than their left ass, grow up! Boys, please stop asking how to ‘increase by two inches’, there is no Grand Canyon out there. The God of small ‘things’, however, may take offense.  We don’t want more shrinkage now, do we?