Uncovering the Item Girl

Cuckoo Moray was the precursor to the Item girl - coquettish yet daring, clad in western clothes, a sign of loose morals, against the austerity of traditional Indian clothes. She flaunted her taut bare midriff, peek-a-boo garter, and flamboyant dance movements - an antithesis to the pious and restrained heroine of the film, which perhaps made Moray’s characterization a symbol of the sexually liberated woman to arrive in later years in the avatar of the Item Girl.

The Tawaif - a culturally nuanced performer, entertained nobility, especially during the Mughal era, excelled in music, dance (mujra), theatre, and Urdu poetry (shero-shayari) was regarded as authority on social etiquette (tehzib) and manners (tameez). The noblemen of the time frequented kothas - homes of the tawaifs, for respite from loveless marriages and exacting pressures from toxic patriarchal families.

As the forerunner to the modern Item Girl, Madhubala as the tawaif, swirling in a resplendent Anarkali and Nigar cap, became every paramour’s lyrical anthem of unrequited love overnight.

This high camp, va-va-voom provocateur of Indian cinema is truly the harbinger of Item Girls of Bollywood, a term that surfaced many years later. Helen's cinematic character, with her taboo-crushing performances, broke the sati-savitri stereotype, as she unapologetically gyrated - both hips and bottom - to control and capture the male gaze. In defiance of the restrained ‘good girl’ of cinema, she was all legs, décolletage and curves, an exhibitionist delirious in her repudiation of the patriarchal storytelling of her time.

While the sexual vexation of the poor man in the cage, alludes to two cinematic stereotypes: untamed masculine energy, - the caged villain, seemingly so violent that he has to be chained and behind bars; and the ‘morally loose' Vamp’ with her risqué fashion and flamboyance - the sum of total seduction.

It was necessary for the film makers (mostly men) to separate, what psychologists called, the Whore from the Virgin, the duality of women (that apparently couldn't ever co-exist). In order for the narrative of the Virgin - the sati savitri, the pavitra wife to exist, the Whore had to be smothered in exaggerated costume and make-up pointing to western licentiousness, the only way to justify the entry of such salaciousness in Indian culture. Clearly, for the filmmakers and scriptwriters of the time, delicious debauchery was never served at home.

In this spanking avatar, Helen dances with more chutzpah - as if audaciously announcing the frolic and freedom of a ‘flawed’ character, that has no patience for the one-dimensional heroine – pretty and prissy, yes – but annoyingly weighed down by puritanical gloominess and self-righteousness.

In fact, her penchant for this character in films – immersed in romantic melancholia of unrequited love – was so immersive that this legendary beauty earned the moniker of “Queen of Tragedy.” Her stunning costumes, deep-kohled eyes, and Mughal-esque jewellery - ornaments acting as a subplot in themselves - played a big role that nimbly married the allurement of beauty with pathos.

Beauty and sadness together is very powerful and she knew it. It is no wonder that while dancing to Thare Rahiyo, in an unforgettable emerald green Anarkali doused in gold embellishments, her dress was inseparable from the promise and the inevitable futility of love.

Her fashion announced that even when swirling in the emotional doldrums of life, it was important to show grace and beauty, perhaps, in her case, her only weapon against forbidden love. And deserted by the shareefs (upper class) men, with lyrical strokes of her deep-kohled eyes she made nostalgia her palette of love. She exemplified the folly of the Madonna-Whore complex that plagued women then, and continues to plague women now.

Helen’s two-layered hip scarf, skimpy bra-top, dripping with beads and baubles, played the ultimate rabble-rouser-villain or hero; she didn't care. The gypsy Vamp executed her oeuvre - to catch the roving eyes and seduce them. This blockbuster song may have had the entire nation's eyes on her virile hips; but in particular, it made women, stifled in patriarchy in different corners of India, ache for freedom.

But it was the subtlety of adaa, the punctiliousness of everyday living, along with the opulent costume and jewellery - Guluband made from precious gemstones and worn tightly around the neck, Lara haar - double stranded necklaces embedded with pearls, rubies and emeralds – that added to the genius of this film.

Through this lens of refined culture, nishatkhana (pleasure house) or kotha, was not about housing ordinary prostitutes; it was an institution of beauty, art, Hindustani classical music and dance, Urdu poetry, amorous entanglements - and all-round blandishment, couched in the coquetry of tawaifs.

In her seminal essay “Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow”, the writer Veena Talwar Oldenberg, argues that tawaifs were “independent and consciously involved in the covert subversion of a male-dominated world” Without any attachment to ‘real’ families like the shareef (upper class) women, “their way of life is not complicitous with male authority”. But the hypocrisy of men was amply evident in the film - they savoured the tawaifs for the heat, but ran home for the hearth.

The delightful blasphemy of wearing a choli sans dupatta (hitherto a classic symbol of Indian modesty) completely demolished the sanctity of nursing bosoms to the carnality of voluptuous breasts. Despite the titillating criss-crossed Gujarati blouse, teamed with a navel grazing ghagra, body adorned with tribal tattoos and faux Rajasthani ivory bangles, adornment of wayward banjarans (gypsies), the dancing seductress is quick to remind us that behind the sexy blouse, dummy, lies the heart, the fount of love.

But the damage was done. For every libidinous man drooling over this raunchy song - the choli and premika (lover) had already become one. Sure, the sexy blouse tightened, but across the country, moral compunctions certainly began to loosen.

Here was the archetype of a totemic woman, who seemed to have no attachment, other than with a band of migrants with no fixed destination, who swayed and writhed to a catchy song with nonchalant ease that had no relation to the film's narrative.

Malaika Arora’s clothes were disarmingly simple - a maroon blouse and a simple black ghagra or skirt; but the body language fired the urban imagination and the forgotten romance of our rural past, of free-spirits that roamed the paddy fields, and perhaps reminded us of living in the moment.

This character existed solely for the purpose of Item-escapism; and despite her one-song extravaganza, it was the confidence of her joyful sexuality that got the entire nation swaying like her skirt and the lyrics of an unforgettable song: “Those who walk under the shade of love, heaven will be below their feet.”

In short, the Item girl is not only bereft of the existential angst that haunted cinematic tawaifs of the past, this new avatar carried not an ounce of moral baggage either. Distancing herself not only from the depth and breadth of the tawaif experience, she also forsakes the ostentatious exuberance of the Vamp in the 70s.

Aishwarya Rai is in her minimal best - a relatively muted lehenga choli (at least by Indian standards), pared-down makeup, and hair adorned only by the passa. But sensuality she has plenty of, what with the choli notoriously short, and the low-waist lehenga exposing such a well gym-toned torso that it would be criminal to cover it with a dupatta. So, she doesn't. This modern-day, one-song courtesan, is now firmly established as pure Item, a thing of beauty and titillation only. With no reason to be part of the film’s narrative except for a spike in adrenaline, it added to the box-office success of the film.

The outright display of sexual ownership in gold harem pants and itsy-bitsy blouse, and an intoxicating declaration of body-worship, were in fact, the beginning of an era where women didn't need men to objectify them; women did it themselves. So, Sheila libidinously rotates on a pink bed allowing lascivious six-pack carnival of testosterone to lust after her, sure; but they are, in Sheila's teasing words, 'never gonna get it'.

Whether this sexual bravado is seen as new-age empowerment or simply cinematic license afforded only to Item girls in Bollywood, it must be said that the popularity of this song outside movie theatres was enough to assert that women were ready to 'get it' whenever they wanted it.

In one song sequence, the white shirt-tie-hat combination worn by the pole-dancing Demi Moore in Striptease was copied meticulously by Katrina Kaif. It was evidently clear that if she is treated like a game, she will show you how it's played.