by For decades, the Bollywood heroine came with an almost invisible casting specification: she was expected to be young, conventionally beautiful, slender, polished and visually compatible with a particular idea of romance. Her body was rarely treated as simply one aspect of her identity. Instead, it could become part of the qualification for being a heroine at all.
The Hindi film industry has never been completely uniform, of course. Indian cinema has always contained performers whose appearances challenged the narrowest beauty ideals. Yet the difference today is increasingly visible in the kinds of characters women with different body types are being allowed to inhabit.
A woman can now be the investigative journalist, the police officer, the politician, the mother, the chef, the middle-class wife, the criminal mastermind, the entrepreneur, the romantic lead or simply the complicated protagonist without the screenplay necessarily treating her body as the central explanation for why she is different.
That change has been slow, uneven and incomplete. It should not be confused with the arrival of a fully inclusive Bollywood. But something important is happening: the definition of who can occupy narrative space is becoming broader.
The shift is not merely about seeing more curves on screen. It is about changing the relationship between body, desirability, authority and storytelling.
The Old Bollywood Body Was More Than an Aesthetic
Traditional Hindi cinema often linked femininity with a particular visual vocabulary.
The heroine was expected to look youthful, glamorous and physically polished. Songs magnified her appearance. Costumes framed her body. Camera movements could turn physical attractiveness into a narrative event. Even when the character was ordinary, the performer playing her was often expected to embody an extraordinary version of beauty.
This created a peculiar contradiction.
Bollywood frequently told stories about ordinary Indian people while casting bodies that did not necessarily resemble the ordinary diversity visible around them.
The problem was not that slim or conventionally attractive actors were successful. There is nothing inherently wrong with any particular body type appearing on screen. The cultural problem emerged when one body type became disproportionately associated with romantic legitimacy, heroism, desirability and leading roles.
The distinction matters.
Representation is not about replacing one beauty ideal with another. It is about removing the assumption that a person’s body should determine the size of their story.
For women especially, appearance has historically carried an enormous amount of narrative weight. A male character could be celebrated for charisma, comic timing, acting ability, dialogue delivery or screen presence even when he did not conform to an exceptionally narrow physical ideal.
Female performers have often had to negotiate appearance alongside performance.
That imbalance is gradually being questioned.
Vidya Balan and the Long Road From Exception to Possibility
Few contemporary Bollywood careers illustrate this cultural transition as clearly as Vidya Balan’s.
Balan’s career did not simply introduce a different body type to mainstream Hindi cinema. More significantly, she demonstrated that a female performer could build commercial and critical authority without making physical conformity the foundation of her career.
Her performances in films such as The Dirty Picture, Kahaani, Tumhari Sulu, Shakuntala Devi and Sherni repeatedly placed her at the centre of stories in which personality, ambition, intelligence, sexuality, vulnerability and agency mattered more than maintaining a standardized heroine silhouette.
Her role as Silk Smitha in The Dirty Picture became particularly significant because it complicated the relationship between female sexuality and conventional beauty.
Balan has spoken publicly about her relationship with her body and the shame she experienced earlier in life. In interviews, she has described the process of learning to accept herself and has emphasized that her body should not become the measure of her worth.
That distinction is culturally important.
The significance of Balan’s career is not that she represents a particular “ideal” body. It is that she helped make bodily difference compatible with centrality.
She was not merely the funny friend.
She was not merely the mother.
She was not merely comic relief.
She could be the woman whose name appeared above the title.
That is a much bigger cultural shift than simply putting a curvier actor into a supporting role.
Huma Qureshi and the Rejection of the Single Female Template
Huma Qureshi represents another important stage in this evolution.
From Gangs of Wasseypur to Dedh Ishqiya, Badlapur, Maharani, Monica, O My Darling and Tarla, Qureshi has moved between genres and character types without allowing one narrow physical template to define her screen identity.
Her public comments about body image have repeatedly challenged the idea that women need to conform to a single physical standard to be considered attractive or successful.
In a 2013 interview, Qureshi explicitly questioned the industry’s fixation on size-zero aesthetics and argued for appreciating individual beauty rather than forcing women into the same box.
Years later, she continued discussing the psychological consequences of body scrutiny, including the way women can learn to judge themselves through an imagined male gaze.
This is where body diversity intersects with psychology.
When an actress repeatedly appears in significant roles without her body being treated as an apology, an exception or a joke, audiences receive a different visual message.
A woman does not have to look identical to every previous heroine to be desirable.
She does not have to be physically interchangeable with another actress to be successful.
And she does not have to spend the entire narrative proving that she deserves to be there.
Qureshi’s career also demonstrates that representation cannot be reduced to measurements or clothing sizes. Her characters are different from one another. Their personalities, social positions and aspirations change.
That variety is itself a form of inclusion.
The Important Difference Between Visibility and Normalisation
One of the biggest mistakes in discussions about body representation is assuming that any appearance of a larger or less conventionally shaped body automatically constitutes progress.
It does not.
A character can be visibly body-diverse and still be written through stereotypes.
For example, if a larger woman appears exclusively as the comic friend, the lonely neighbour, the food-obsessed character or the woman whose entire story revolves around losing weight, the industry has increased visibility without necessarily increasing representation.
Visibility asks:
Who is on screen?
Normalisation asks:
What are they allowed to be?
That second question is more important.
A truly meaningful shift occurs when an actor with a body outside the traditional heroine template can play a character whose body is not treated as the plot.
She can fall in love without the romance being presented as surprising.
She can be ambitious without the script turning her appearance into an obstacle.
She can be fashionable without the costume being framed as a joke.
She can be powerful without the screenplay requiring her to “overcome” her body first.
She can simply exist.
That is the direction in which inclusive casting becomes culturally significant.
Double XL
Shows Both Progress and the Problem
The 2022 film Double XL, starring Huma Qureshi and Sonakshi Sinha, provides an interesting case study because it explicitly placed larger-bodied women at the centre of its story.
The film addressed social expectations surrounding women’s bodies, ambition and desirability. Its existence itself reflected a growing willingness to discuss body discrimination within mainstream Hindi entertainment.
But it also exposes a paradox.
When body diversity becomes the explicit subject of a film, audiences are invited to think about the body.
When body diversity becomes ordinary casting, audiences can forget to think about it.
There is a difference between a film saying, “Look at these women because they are challenging a body standard,” and a film simply saying, “Here are two women. This is their story.”
The second stage may ultimately be more transformative.
The goal of representation should not be to create a permanent category called “different bodies.”
It should be to expand the definition of normal.
Casting Is Changing Because Stories Are Changing
Body diversity cannot be separated from the evolution of Hindi storytelling.
The older commercial model frequently revolved around a heroic male protagonist and a female romantic counterpart. That structure naturally privileged performers who could function within a highly stylised fantasy of heterosexual romance.
But the Hindi film landscape has expanded.
Streaming platforms have created space for limited series, character-driven dramas, dark comedies, domestic stories, crime narratives, political dramas and middle-class social realism.
That has expanded the kinds of people casting directors need.
The protagonist does not always have to be the glamorous dream figure.
She can be complicated.
She can be flawed.
She can be older.
She can be a mother.
She can have an unconventional profession.
She can belong to a small town.
She can be visibly ordinary.
And increasingly, ordinary does not have to mean unattractive.
This distinction is particularly important because streaming has weakened the old relationship between theatrical glamour and female visibility.
A performer no longer needs to fit one blockbuster heroine archetype to become culturally prominent.
Series can build careers gradually.
Character actors can become leads.
Actors can move between cinema and streaming.
And audiences can develop attachment to characters over multiple episodes rather than making an instant judgement based on a two-hour theatrical spectacle.
The Streaming Era Has Complicated the Beauty Hierarchy
Streaming has not magically solved representation.
It has, however, multiplied the number of stories being produced.
That matters.
When there are only a limited number of major female roles, casting decisions become highly competitive and traditional beauty standards can exert enormous influence.
When there are hundreds of characters across films and series, there is greater room for variation.
This is partly why performers such as Shefali Shah have become important to the contemporary Hindi screen landscape.
Shah’s work demonstrates that female screen presence does not have to depend on youth-oriented glamour. Her performances in projects such as Delhi Crime, Darlings and Human have positioned her as a major dramatic performer whose authority comes primarily from character and craft.
Her significance to body inclusivity is therefore indirect but important.
Representation is not only about size.
It is also about dismantling the idea that female visibility has an expiration date or a single aesthetic entry requirement.
A broader definition of the female protagonist inevitably creates room for more diverse bodies.
The Psychological Effect of Seeing More Bodies in Important Roles
The cultural effects of representation can be difficult to measure because audiences do not respond to media in identical ways.
A film does not automatically create confidence in every viewer.
However, repeated visual exposure can influence what people perceive as familiar, desirable, successful or socially acceptable.
This is particularly significant for young audiences.
If the overwhelming visual message is that the romantic heroine has to possess one narrow physical shape, viewers may gradually internalise that shape as the default.
The opposite can also happen.
When audiences repeatedly see women of different sizes and appearances occupying meaningful roles, the range of bodies associated with confidence and belonging can expand.
The psychological message becomes less:
“This is what I must look like to be visible.”
And more:
“People who look different from one another can all belong here.”
That distinction can influence self-perception.
It can also influence how people look at others.
A society’s beauty standards are not formed solely by films. Families, schools, advertising, social media, fashion, peers and cultural traditions all participate.
But cinema has a special cultural power because it combines the body with narrative importance.
The audience does not simply see someone’s appearance.
It sees that appearance attached to love, authority, humour, intelligence, sexuality, ambition and belonging.
That combination can make representation especially powerful.
The Male Gaze Still Matters
It would be premature to suggest that Bollywood has completely moved beyond the male gaze.
It has not.
Women continue to experience appearance-based scrutiny in entertainment culture, and academic research on Bollywood has documented how female characters can be divided into narrow categories involving respectability, sexuality and desirability.
A 2026 study published in Frontiers in Sociology examined audience perceptions of female characters in Bollywood and found that the traditional distinction between the respectable heroine and the hyper-sexualised “item girl” remains culturally significant.
This matters for body representation because body diversity cannot flourish fully if women are still expected to perform femininity according to rigid categories.
A broader range of bodies requires a broader range of female identities.
Otherwise, the industry simply creates a new version of the same hierarchy.
The curvier woman may be accepted as “confident.”
The older woman may be accepted as “mature.”
The larger woman may be accepted as “comic.”
The conventionally attractive woman remains “romantic.”
That is not true liberation.
It is merely a rearrangement of stereotypes.
Fashion Has Become Part of the Conversation
Clothing is another area where casting diversity can have a surprisingly powerful effect.
For years, mainstream fashion imagery in Indian entertainment frequently treated certain garments as belonging primarily to particular bodies.
A saree, lehenga, fitted blouse, crop top or glamorous evening dress could be presented differently depending on who wore it.
When performers with different body types appear in mainstream fashion campaigns, promotional events and film wardrobes, they challenge the assumption that style belongs exclusively to one physical category.
This matters because fashion and body confidence are deeply connected.
A person who never sees bodies like theirs presented as fashionable may begin to associate fashion with transformation rather than expression.
Inclusive casting can reverse that message.
The question becomes not:
“How can this body be made acceptable in this outfit?”
but:
“How can this outfit express this character?”
That is a subtle but meaningful shift in visual culture.
Bollywood Is Also Responding to a Changed Audience
The contemporary Indian audience is not consuming cinema in the same way previous generations did.
Young viewers move between Bollywood, South Indian cinema, Korean dramas, Hollywood productions, British series, Turkish dramas and social media creators.
They are exposed to different ideas of attractiveness and characterisation simultaneously.
Social media has also made audiences more capable of challenging entertainment industries publicly.
A casting choice that once might have been accepted silently can now become a discussion across Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and other digital platforms.
This does not mean every online criticism represents a universal audience opinion.
It means the conversation itself has become more visible.
Audiences increasingly discuss colourism, body shaming, ageism, beauty filters, unrealistic editing and representation.
The industry therefore operates within a more self-conscious visual culture.
Actors are not simply being watched.
The conventions surrounding their bodies are being discussed.
The Global Picture Offers an Important Warning
Bollywood’s gradual shift should also be viewed alongside international entertainment.
Hollywood has experienced extensive conversations about body diversity, but global research shows that visibility remains uneven.
The Geena Davis Institute’s 2024 film study found that only 6.5 percent of characters in its sample of family films were identified as fat, while just 2 percent of leads were fat.
That finding is important because it demonstrates that body diversity remains an industry-wide challenge rather than a problem unique to Indian cinema.
The Institute has also warned against a familiar pattern: larger-bodied characters appearing more often in minor roles than central ones.
This offers Bollywood a useful lesson.
The goal should not simply be to increase the number of diverse bodies in the background.
It should be to expand who gets to drive the story.
Global entertainment has shown that representation can become superficial when studios treat diversity as a marketing category rather than a storytelling principle.
Bollywood has the opportunity to learn from both the progress and the limitations of international cinema.
India Has a Different Cultural Relationship With the Body
At the same time, Western models of body positivity cannot simply be copied into India.
Indian ideas about bodies are shaped by family structures, marriage expectations, regional beauty traditions, colourism, class, food culture, clothing, religion, cinema and social media.
The body can become part of conversations about marriageability, respectability and family reputation.
For women, appearance can also be linked to ideas about femininity and “taking care” of oneself.
This means that Bollywood’s body representation has consequences beyond entertainment.
When the industry expands the types of women who can be romantic leads, professionals or protagonists, it challenges the idea that social legitimacy belongs only to women who satisfy one aesthetic formula.
But the transformation must remain culturally sensitive.
Body inclusivity in India cannot simply mean importing American terminology or turning every conversation into a debate about weight.
Indian audiences contain enormous differences in body shape, skin tone, height, age, disability, class background and regional identity.
True inclusivity needs to reflect that complexity.
The Next Frontier Is Not Just “Plus-Size Casting”
The phrase “plus-size representation” can itself become limiting if it turns diverse bodies into a single category.
Bodies are not divided neatly into two groups: traditional and plus-size.
There are short bodies.
Tall bodies.
Broad bodies.
Soft bodies.
Athletic bodies.
Older bodies.
Disabled bodies.
Bodies affected by pregnancy.
Bodies shaped by genetics.
Bodies that simply do not fit the narrow visual language of fashion advertising.
An inclusive industry would therefore move beyond the idea that one alternative body type represents diversity.
It would create a screen landscape in which physical variation is ordinary.
This is especially important for male actors.
Although women’s bodies have historically faced intense beauty surveillance, men also experience expectations surrounding height, muscularity, youth and physical dominance.
A genuinely inclusive casting culture should eventually challenge those expectations too.
The question should be:
What body best serves this character?
rather than:
What body is easiest to sell as a hero or heroine?
Representation Becomes More Powerful When the Body Stops Being the Plot
One of the clearest indicators of progress will be when audiences stop discussing certain casting choices as unusual.
Imagine a romantic comedy in which the heroine is visibly outside the traditional Bollywood beauty template, but nobody explains why she deserves love.
Imagine a thriller in which the female detective’s body is irrelevant to her competence.
Imagine a family drama where the mother is neither glamorous nor comic relief.
Imagine an action film where physical authority is not restricted to one narrow masculine silhouette.
Imagine an older woman whose romantic life is treated as normal rather than extraordinary.
These stories do not need speeches about body positivity.
They demonstrate inclusion through the ordinary mechanics of storytelling.
That may ultimately be the most meaningful form of representation.
Why Casting Alone Cannot Change Everything
It is also important not to place the entire responsibility for body acceptance on actors.
An actress can appear on screen in a diverse body, but cinematography can still objectify her.
A casting director can select a wider range of performers, but a costume department can still design clothing around restrictive beauty assumptions.
A writer can create an interesting character, but editing can still reduce her to appearance.
A film can cast a larger-bodied protagonist but make every joke about her body.
Representation therefore requires collaboration across the production process.
Writers determine whether body size becomes part of the character’s identity.
Directors determine how that body is filmed.
Cinematographers determine which visual conventions are used.
Costume designers determine whether the character gets to inhabit fashion naturally.
Marketing departments determine which images audiences see first.
Publicists influence the questions surrounding a film.
And audiences influence what becomes commercially sustainable.
Body inclusivity is therefore not simply a casting problem.
It is a storytelling ecosystem.
The Commercial Question Is Changing Too
For years, one argument against broader representation was that audiences supposedly wanted only conventional glamour.
But audience behaviour is more complicated.
Films and series led by women who do not conform perfectly to traditional beauty expectations have repeatedly found audiences when the storytelling connects.
The lesson is not that body diversity automatically guarantees commercial success.
It does not.
Nor does conventional beauty automatically guarantee it.
Rather, the old assumption that physical conformity is the primary requirement for audience connection becomes harder to defend when viewers demonstrate attachment to strong characters across a wider range of appearances.
This is particularly visible in streaming, where viewers can become invested in characters over time.
Once audiences care about a character, the actor’s body becomes part of the character rather than an audition criterion.
That psychological transition is significant.
From “Body Positivity” to Body Neutrality
Another interesting development is the movement from body positivity toward body neutrality.
Body positivity can sometimes create another expectation: people must love their bodies.
But that is not emotionally realistic for everyone.
A more sustainable cultural message may be that a person deserves respect regardless of whether they feel beautiful every day.
Cinema can contribute to that idea by refusing to make physical appearance the central measure of human value.
A heroine does not have to declare that she loves her body.
She can simply have a job.
She can have friendships.
She can experience heartbreak.
She can fall in love.
She can make mistakes.
She can succeed.
She can fail.
She can be funny, angry, ambitious, selfish, generous or complicated.
Her body can exist without constantly requiring explanation.
That is a quieter form of liberation.
Bollywood’s Progress Is Real, But It Is Not Complete
It would be inaccurate to describe contemporary Bollywood as fully body-inclusive.
Traditional beauty standards remain powerful.
Commercial cinema still relies heavily on glamour.
Female performers continue to face intense scrutiny around appearance.
Larger-bodied characters can still be restricted to specific narrative functions.
And representation can sometimes become a marketing theme rather than an integrated part of storytelling.
Yet it would also be inaccurate to claim that nothing has changed.
The careers of performers such as Vidya Balan and Huma Qureshi, the growing importance of character-driven female storytelling, the rise of streaming, changing audience conversations and the increasing visibility of body-image discussions all point toward a broader cultural movement.
The shift is gradual because cultural standards rarely disappear overnight.
They become less absolute.
First, one performer breaks the mould.
Then another.
Then a filmmaker realizes a different casting choice works.
Then audiences become accustomed to it.
Eventually, what once required explanation becomes ordinary.
That is how visual culture changes.
The Future: Casting People, Not Templates
The most meaningful future for Bollywood is not a world where every film has a checklist of body types.
That would turn inclusion into another formula.
Instead, the goal should be a casting culture in which physical variation is treated as a normal part of human life.
A character should be chosen because the performer brings something truthful, compelling or creatively appropriate to the role.
Sometimes that performer will be conventionally thin.
Sometimes she will be curvier.
Sometimes she will be older.
Sometimes she will be petite.
Sometimes she will have a visibly different physicality from the traditional Bollywood heroine.
None of those qualities should automatically determine the size of her story.
The cultural transformation happens when audiences stop asking why someone “doesn’t look like a heroine” and start asking whether the character is compelling.
That question moves cinema away from appearance as qualification and toward performance as possibility.
Conclusion: The Screen Gets Bigger When the Definition of Belonging Gets Bigger
Bollywood’s relationship with the body is changing, but the most interesting part of that change is not simply that different-looking actors are appearing on screen.
It is that the screen is gradually becoming more comfortable with the idea that a protagonist can look like a real person.
That matters.
For generations, cinema has helped teach audiences what romance looks like, what success looks like, what glamour looks like and, sometimes, what desirability is supposed to look like.
When those images expand, cultural imagination expands with them.
The future of body-inclusive Bollywood should therefore not be about finding a new “perfect” body to replace the old one.
It should be about dismantling the assumption that there was ever only one body capable of carrying a story.
Vidya Balan’s career showed that a woman could become the centre of a film without surrendering herself to a narrow physical template. Huma Qureshi’s public discussions about body image and her varied roles have continued that conversation. Streaming has created additional space for performers whose appeal comes from character rather than conformity. Global representation research simultaneously reminds us that visibility alone is insufficient.
The next step is deeper.
A diverse body should not need a lesson attached to it.
It should not always represent a social issue.
It should not automatically become the comic character, the insecure woman or the inspirational exception.
It should simply be allowed to belong.
Perhaps that is the clearest sign of genuine progress: when Bollywood no longer needs to announce that it is casting beyond traditional body types because audiences have already accepted a much larger definition of who gets to be seen, desired, respected and remembered.
The industry is not there yet.
But the frame is getting wider.
And sometimes cultural change begins precisely there — not when the old image disappears, but when the screen finally becomes large enough to hold more than one version of a human body.
Sources: Indian Express, Vogue India, India Today, Filmfare, The Week, Times of India, Bollywood Hungama, Frontiers in Sociology, Geena Davis Institute, Medical Humanities
