Sovereign Body
I love the fact that Aishwarya Rai dresses however the heck she wants to and has chosen to be whatever size she is. It takes a lot of courage for a celebrity of her stature and its no wonder she stirs up a firestorm every year she shows up at Cannes. The public fury over her physical changes is not a rational debate about fashion; it is an involuntary reaction to the sight of an apex commodity depreciating in real time. Those who are judging her are well out of bounds and likely know this too, but can't help themselves and that is the irony of it.
In the calculus of global celebrity, Aishwarya Rai’s body was very afforded the rights of private property. For thirty years, the Indian public invested in her beauty as if it were a sovereign wealth fund, using her global validation to soothe a deep-seated post-colonial insecurity; the collective fear and self-doubt that questioned if India measured up to the western standards of beauty. When she won Miss World in 1994, it was treated as proof that India could compete on the world stage, making her physical perfection a point of national pride if not reclamation. Because the culture collectively commodified her youth, it now feels entitled to police her aging, viewing her weight gain and altered jawline as a breach of contract, a reckless if not endangerment management of a public asset.
The business logic of why she continues to be relevant is entirely separate from this emotional entitlement. L’Oréal is driven without the sentimentality of those who are upset with her failure to preserve eternal youth. They keep renewing her contract because she delivers a massive, fiercely loyal demographic across South Asia and the diaspora. The reality is that the women who criticize her gowns on Instagram will still buy the lipstick she promotes because her name carries the weight of a generational myth. To the corporation, her body is a high-performing financial instrument that guarantees brand visibility on a global red carpet. The arrangement serves both parties perfectly: she retains a lucrative global platform, and they secure the undivided attention of a billion-person market.
The annual drama following her appearance at Cannes is precisely because of this tension between corporate utility and public mythology. The internet trolls are upset because of her refusal to hide away, or to starve herself into a sample size, because it exposes the fraudulence of the beauty industry that they are so beholden to. She is showing up to collect her paycheck while looking like a wealthy, fifty-two-year-old mother who has undergone the ordinary, irreversible shifts of time. By remaining so visible without remaining young as she seems mandated to be, she forces a reckoning upon her. They have been raised on illusions of needing to latch to youth for as long as possible at whatever cost necessary. She just by being herself forces them to confront what their priorities in life.
In the calculus of global celebrity, Aishwarya Rai’s body was very afforded the rights of private property. For thirty years, the Indian public invested in her beauty as if it were a sovereign wealth fund, using her global validation to soothe a deep-seated post-colonial insecurity; the collective fear and self-doubt that questioned if India measured up to the western standards of beauty. When she won Miss World in 1994, it was treated as proof that India could compete on the world stage, making her physical perfection a point of national pride if not reclamation. Because the culture collectively commodified her youth, it now feels entitled to police her aging, viewing her weight gain and altered jawline as a breach of contract, a reckless if not endangerment management of a public asset.
The business logic of why she continues to be relevant is entirely separate from this emotional entitlement. L’Oréal is driven without the sentimentality of those who are upset with her failure to preserve eternal youth. They keep renewing her contract because she delivers a massive, fiercely loyal demographic across South Asia and the diaspora. The reality is that the women who criticize her gowns on Instagram will still buy the lipstick she promotes because her name carries the weight of a generational myth. To the corporation, her body is a high-performing financial instrument that guarantees brand visibility on a global red carpet. The arrangement serves both parties perfectly: she retains a lucrative global platform, and they secure the undivided attention of a billion-person market.
The annual drama following her appearance at Cannes is precisely because of this tension between corporate utility and public mythology. The internet trolls are upset because of her refusal to hide away, or to starve herself into a sample size, because it exposes the fraudulence of the beauty industry that they are so beholden to. She is showing up to collect her paycheck while looking like a wealthy, fifty-two-year-old mother who has undergone the ordinary, irreversible shifts of time. By remaining so visible without remaining young as she seems mandated to be, she forces a reckoning upon her. They have been raised on illusions of needing to latch to youth for as long as possible at whatever cost necessary. She just by being herself forces them to confront what their priorities in life.
Filed under:
Beauty