Many eye brows were raised recently when Ipsita Pati – a participant from Orissa in the
Miss Universe India contest raised allegations of discrimination and maltreatment against the organisers of the
show. In a complaint lodged with the Women’s Police Station, Bhubaneswar, she says that she was deliberately kept
starved and undernourished at the grooming camp in Goa which drastically brought her weight down from 53 kg to 45
kg; and at the end was dropped from the contest for being ‘under-weight’,
At the centre of the controversy is former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen, whose company Tantra
Entertainment organised the show. Ipsita says that she was kept confined at the grooming camp with abnormal restrictions.
“The diet prescribed by the dietician was horrible,” she says, “I suffered from weakness and was hospitalised.
However the promoters did not let me speak to my family members. It was not allowed during the grooming session. I was feeling
miserable.”
Out of the total 10,200 probables, 60 were shortlisted for the contest. Out of them 30 were
again shortlisted for the finals. Ipsita and another participant from Orissa, Shreya Mishra, made it to the final list. But
at the last moment Ipsita was abruptly disqualified for the reason of being underweight and was replaced by another girl from
West Bengal.
Ipsita and her mother met Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and appealed for his intervention in the matter. The episode serves as an
eye opener for the behind-the-scene activities in the gloomy world of beauty contests. It seems such contests are not meant
for recognition of beauty on its own merit and rather have turned into an exercise in administered beauty in the name of grooming.
It is high time a nationwide debate is initiated on the interests that such beauty pageants
serve. In the past we have seen uproars highlighting charges that beauty contests and fashion shows promote ill-health
and malnutrition in the name of encouraging slim physique and minimal weight. It seems, the recent insistence on a minimum
mandatory weight of the participants has been a corrective step in this direction. But if instead of using this provision
in a discreet manner it is utilised for furthering partisan motives, then the whole episode should be subjected to scrutiny.
Interestingly the present generation of youngsters have grown special fascination towards adopting
beauty and modelling as a career option which has led to emergence of a new breed of professionals who specialise in ‘coaching’
these aspirants to accomplish the aspired success in beauty pageants. A whole industry has cropped up including event management
companies, costume designers, PR consultants, and ad agencies which thrive on the obsession of the new generation with
a career in beauty and fashion.
So much so that beauty has now shifted from being a natural attribute of women to becoming
a subject matter of artificial cultivation. As a result, various kinds of vested interests have raised ugly heads in
the scene. Ipsita seems to have become a victim of perpetrators such vested interests.
