It’s not everybody’s dream to be fat, but it is everyone’s dream to have that sculpted body that actresses and models flaunt on TV and movies. Bipasha Basu, Anushka Sharma, Deepika Padukone, you name it! Guys love them for their bodies. Girls follow them to have a similar structure. That flawless flat stomach. The perfect bust size. The curvy hips. But those who can’t are social outcasts. All they want is a well-built girl to be a girlfriend and a wife for that matter.

A tiny pot belly is intolerable. You look like you’re pregnant! Do some exercise, or have liposuction.

Talk about small bust-size. It looks like you’re flat chested. Be flat-stomached and not flat chested, it looks horrible, you should wear padded bra, that can fix it.

Name a problem and we have a solution, may it include harming your own health, but then you have to fit the social standards, without which you look demeaning for the guy you walk with!

Enough with the body-standards, let’s talk about ‘skin’.

Dark skinned? You are perfect for arranged marriage, and that too after you put layers of white-powder on your face to hide your true ‘colors’!

Pimples? Your life is over, girl. No hope for you. Either get a flawless skin, or stop dreaming about a normal life. Having pimples is NOT normal. You are NOT normal. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?

Height? Nothing below 5’5”. We can’t marry our son to a dwarf. The babies would be small too, extra small! 

Nose? Wide nosed girls ‘not allowed’. Have a perfectly carved, thin, sleek nose that Hollywood actresses support. Have a nose-job! 

Eyes? Tiny, small looking eyes make you look Chinese and we are Indians. We want an Indian-girl, not ‘cheeni’.

Lips? Plump and full lips only. Flat lips look so boring. Plump lips, just like Angelina Jolie!

Facial Hair? Gross! Remove them all, bleach them, wax them, thread them, pluck them, get them treated for heaven’s sake but don’t support them. Stop looking like your father!

And then the depressed one would ask – Is there something in my body that is ‘normal’? The answer would be always – NO! Screamed out-loud, but for the sake of politeness, we lie.

Some magazines who claim to solve ‘personal’ problems are stormed with letters dealing with ridiculous questions like –

I am below 5’5”, dark skinned and have some pimples on my face and a pot belly too? I like a guy who doesn’t even look at me, what should I do?

DIE – This is the one word answer that real world would have suggested, but then magazine writers have to maintain that diplomacy to highlight the falseness of equality that’s being served everywhere. They would answer jovially. Faking that the world is a beautiful place to live in. Go buy some high heels, apply fairness creams and pimple-reducing face-wash and gels, buy a tummy-tuck to hide the waist-fat or go for liposuction if you can afford it, and you’re good to go! That guy will love you head-over-heels. Lastly, Be yourself, be real! 

Such a brutal irony in the last four words, isn’t it? And these four words are running the lives of ‘zero’ people. Nobody is being himself. Nobody is real. Everyone is trying to be perfect in his own way. A perfection that – doesn’t exist.

The idea of writing this piece came in my mind as soon as I saw the first look of Anushka Sharma in the movie PK. Her lips reminded me of ‘plastic surgery gone bad’ and I realized that nobody is saved from the social pressure, not even Bollywood actresses, then who are we?