Lee Randall: Embrace the bulge: hold yourself 'as if'

Published on Tuesday 1 December 2009 18:09

WHILE I believe in embracing local culture when I travel, I've never been keen on going all-out native. It feels forced and patronising. You'll never see me on a Caribbean beach having corn-row plaits woven across my skull. I did not return home from India with henna tattoos on my hands. Nor am I sitting in the office dressed in a sari.

More's the pity. If there is a mode of dress that's more flattering to the rounded female form then I have yet to identify it. I'd always known that India's valuation of beauty – at least traditionally, though sadly that is changing – allowed for more flesh than is "acceptable" here in the West, but now I've actually seen it for myself.

India was, for me, the land of the soft belly. Even the slender women I met had soft, gently protruding bellies and not a single one seemed remotely concerned about her wobbly bit. Not once did they bore – or encouraged me to bore – with talk of diets or gym workouts. Not one woman bemoaned the span of her hips. What's more, all of these wildly varied women looked especially marvellous when wearing their brightly hued saris and salwar kameezes.

One brief and limited trip hardly makes me an expert on India, I know, but being body self-conscious myself, I spent a lot of time eyeing up my new acquaintances, often with a degree of envy. I noticed, for instance, that while I could immediately grasp which woman was big, bigger, biggest, the precise dimensions of each body were vague.

It was only when they donned western clothes – usually jeans topped by a kameez and always, always some version of softly draped scarf – that it became apparent which ladies had size L bums, tums or boobs.

With hindsight I realise that being among women in traditional dress made me focus much more on the infinite variety of their faces. At the time, I mainly marvelled at the way the soft drapes of the sari fall just so over a woman's tummy, creating a useful sense of mystery by obscuring the view.

It's the very trick the oft-maligned (but never by me!) Trinny and Susannah have recommended all along, coaxing apple-shaped dames into softly shirred tops and tutoring them in the deployment of jackets, scarves, and necklaces as "stomach-shrinking" diversions.

So much of western attire, I now realise, showcases a gal's form at its worst, rather than playing to its strengths. Jeans work best on boys and girls who are built like boys. Miniskirts also work best on girls who are built like boys – that is, with super-slim legs, preferably of the "endless" variety.

(Oh dear, I'm having a flashback to the time when my oft-maligned – by me – mum warned that most fashion was created by misogynistic gay men and really only suited to, erm, girls built like boys.)

From the small amount of research I've done, traditional Indian ideals of beauty are linked to fertility. Red lips and cheeks are valued because they indicate health; full breasts, a narrow waist and wide hips indicate the ability not only to bear children, but also to nourish and sustain their lives. The lovely couplet "sensuously rounded" cropped up a lot as I whizzed around the internet.

I also noticed that sari-clad women have erect posture and a most elegant way of walking. Maybe that's how they keep the intricately pleated and tucked garment on? Goodness knows the ladies I met spent a lot of time flicking their pallavs back into place (that's the final bit of fabric that crosses your upper body diagonally to lie over your left shoulder). Keeping your head up and your shoulders back not only aligns the body properly, it feeds into what self-help gurus call the "as if" mentality. Live your life as if you were everything you'd like to be – happy, loved, radiant – and before you know it, there you are!