Look good, feel bad

Diet pills, plastic surgery and Botox are synonymous with the film industry these days. But celebrities will hardly ever talk about them.

Bollywood actresses Kalki Koechlin and Richa Chadha spoke recently about how the pressure of looking good is very difficult to handle. Recently at a TedXTalk, Richa revealed how she was asked to get a boob job, cosmetic enhancements and to lose weight. She also spoke about how these pressures led to self-harm and destroyed her confidence.

There is too much pressure on actresses these days to look good. “Young women are constantly pressurised to look beautiful and the only way they think they can do so is by changing their appearance. This is an absolutely ridiculous standard and we need to work hard on changing how we teach our young people as to what is beautiful,” says Diana Monteiro, a counseling psychologist.

Agreeing with Richa and Kalki, Reshmi Shetty, an aesthetic physician, better known as the ‘Bollywood Doctor’, explains, “Everybody wants to look beautiful and better. There’s nothing wrong in taking advantage of science but it’s a double-edged sword when it’s done for the wrong reasons. There are a lot of celebrities coming to me with genuine issues; stars who are working in their 40s after marriage. Cosmetic surgery is the only confidence booster for these girls. They need not change the size of their stomach or enhance their breasts. But small things like dull eyes with a little filler they look beautiful, then why not But going to the other extreme and thinking that a boob job is going to change your looks is a little too much. A director might say that the film requires you to look a certain way, but it’s your decision.”

Diana adds: “The challenge in our country is that you can go in for changing your looks as and when you please without any safeguards in place. Anyone who seeks a cosmetic procedure without having a proper psychological evaluation and counseling to ensure they understand the full extent of what they are doing, is very harmful.”