THE MUSCLES OF BOLLYWOOD

Thanks to our films, personal trainers now have physiques that not only communicate (sexual) attractiveness, but also professionalism, control and even cosmopolitanism

- Michiel Baas

IT TOOK three movies and a magazine to popularise a new bodily ideal among men in India. This ideal of bulging biceps, rock-hard abs and visibly pronounced pecs diverges significantly from the healthy-potbelly of yesteryear’s middle-class male.

Where being overweight once signified prosperity and well-being, the new ideal with its emphasis on leanness and vascularity comes closer to that of the working classes. Yet the hard labour that is put in it not only speaks of physical strength but also discipline, professionalism and cosmopolitanism.

Even if this new bodily ideal has been roughly two decades in the making, it’s only in the last decade or so that it has caused a fitness boom across India.

For an older generation of fitness trainers and bodybuilders, Salman Khan’s hit movie Pyaar Kiya to Darna Kya (1998) was the first time they were reminded of what could be achieved with their bodies. In the song O O Jaane Jaana a barechested Khan drives down the beach to a make-shift stage where he arrives while an elated audience cheers him on, the focus unavoidably on his powerful chest and six-pack abs.

However, the actual fitness boom in India commenced in full only when Shah Rukh Khan revealed his freshly-baked sixpack abs in Om Shanthi Om (2007). His transformation was an undeniable topic of discussion in popular media that year.

Yet, this was nothing compared to what would befall Aamir Khan after he starred in the Hindi remake of Tamil blockbuster Ghajini (2008), which itself was based on American classic Memento (2000).