by Introduction: When Love Stories Decide Who Deserves to Be Desired
For generations, Bollywood romance has offered audiences more than declarations of love, elaborate wedding sequences, and rain-soaked encounters. It has also presented powerful ideas about beauty, attractiveness, femininity, masculinity, and the bodies considered worthy of being loved. Through its romantic leads, Hindi cinema has helped shape public expectations about who attracts attention, who receives affection, and what a desirable partner should look like.
The familiar Bollywood romance has traditionally featured a conventionally attractive heroine and a handsome hero whose physical presence reinforces established ideals. The heroine might be celebrated for her slender silhouette, luminous complexion, and graceful movements, while the hero’s appeal might rest on his height, muscularity, confidence, and ability to protect the woman he loves. Although Hindi cinema has never represented every romantic pairing through this formula, its repetition has helped establish a recognizable visual language for cinematic love.
The consequences extend beyond entertainment. When audiences repeatedly see particular bodies rewarded with romantic attention, they may begin associating those bodies with happiness, confidence, and social acceptance. Conversely, when people with different body types rarely appear as romantic protagonists, their absence can suggest that love belongs to a narrow category of people.
However, Bollywood’s relationship with body image is not a straightforward story of exclusion followed by progress. Some films have reinforced conventional beauty standards, while others have challenged them through unconventional heroines, complicated relationships, and characters who discover their worth beyond romantic validation.
Examining this evolution reveals how cinema can reproduce cultural insecurities while creating opportunities for more inclusive understandings of attraction. The central question is no longer simply whether Bollywood depicts beautiful people. It is whether its definition of beauty leaves enough room for everyone to imagine themselves as worthy of love.
The Classical Bollywood Romance: Beauty as a Visual Promise
Early Hindi cinema established conventions that later romantic films would refine. Romance frequently unfolded through poetic dialogue, musical interludes, emotional sacrifices, and visual compositions that presented couples as idealized unions.
Within these stories, physical appearance was rarely incidental. Costumes, lighting, choreography, and camera angles communicated which characters deserved admiration. The heroine’s appearance often became part of the film’s emotional vocabulary, while the hero’s physical confidence reinforced his position as a desirable partner.
These conventions reflected wider cultural expectations concerning gender, marriage, class, and respectability. Bollywood did not invent society’s beauty hierarchies, but its enormous cultural reach helped circulate familiar versions of them.
Romantic idealization is not inherently exclusionary. Cinema naturally relies on heightened images, beautiful landscapes, glamorous costumes, and emotionally intensified situations. The problem emerges when idealization becomes repetitive enough to appear like a requirement.
When similar physical characteristics dominate romantic leads across generations, audiences may struggle to distinguish cinematic convention from the realities of human attraction.
For viewers already experiencing insecurity about their appearance, this distinction matters. A fictional world in which desirable people consistently possess similar bodies can influence expectations about who will receive attention, who will be chosen, and who must change before finding acceptance.
Bollywood’s early romantic traditions therefore established an influential idea: the body was not simply something a character inhabited. It could become a credential for participation in the romantic fantasy.
The 1990s: Glamour, Stardom, and Romantic Ideals
The 1990s brought an especially influential phase of mainstream Hindi romance. Films such as Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) helped popularize romantic fantasies built around family relationships, youthful attraction, social belonging, and visually memorable couples.
These films differed in their storytelling, but glamour played an important role in their cultural appeal. Designer clothing, scenic locations, choreographed songs, and polished appearances made romance feel extraordinary.
In Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the relationship between Raj and Simran unfolds through questions of independence, family expectations, cultural identity, and personal choice. Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol’s screen chemistry helped establish a romantic pairing that audiences could celebrate and revisit across generations.
The film’s importance does not depend on whether its actors represent every possible body type. Instead, it illustrates how romantic stardom can become a template for imagining love.
The star system creates a circular relationship between visibility and desirability. Actors become romantic icons partly because films position them as desirable, and their popularity encourages studios to reproduce familiar images.
This does not mean audiences passively accept everything they see. Viewers can admire a star without wanting to resemble that person. They can also question a film’s beauty standards or embrace performers who differ from conventional ideals.
Nevertheless, the concentration of romantic visibility around a relatively small group of stars makes representation consequential. The issue is not whether every actor should fit the same ideal, but whether enough opportunities exist for different people to become romantic icons.
The Heroine’s Body: From Romantic Reward to Individual Identity
One of Bollywood romance’s persistent gender imbalances concerns the heroine’s appearance.
Historically, women in mainstream romantic films have often faced intense scrutiny over their physical presentation. Their clothing, complexion, hair, body proportions, and perceived elegance can become central to how the camera communicates their desirability.
Male leads also experience appearance-related expectations, but these pressures frequently operate differently. Masculine attractiveness can be connected to confidence, wealth, authority, and emotional determination, allowing some male characters to retain romantic credibility through characteristics beyond physical beauty.
Women, meanwhile, have often been expected to maintain a polished appearance while embodying emotional warmth, modesty, independence, and sexual appeal. This combination creates an exhausting ideal in which a woman’s body becomes a surface onto which cultural expectations of femininity are projected.
Some films have complicated this pattern by giving female protagonists identities beyond their romantic relationships.
In Jab We Met (2007), Geet’s humor, energy, emotional openness, and expressive personality make her memorable. Her appeal demonstrates how romantic identification can emerge from personality rather than an exclusively visual ideal.
In Queen (2013), Rani’s journey becomes meaningful after her engagement ends and she travels independently. She discovers confidence and personal possibilities beyond her previous expectations of marriage.
Although Queen is not a conventional romance, its relevance lies in challenging the assumption that a woman’s happiness must depend on being chosen.
This matters for body narratives because romantic desirability can become a measure of female worth. When women are allowed meaningful lives outside romantic validation, their appearance becomes less central to determining whether their stories deserve satisfying conclusions.
More inclusive storytelling would extend this freedom to women across body sizes, skin tones, and physical abilities, allowing them to experience attraction and emotional complexity without their appearance becoming a problem requiring explanation.
Skin Tone and the Politics of Being Beautiful
Body inclusivity in Bollywood cannot be understood through size alone. Skin tone has also played a significant role in the industry’s representation of desirability.
Fairness ideals in South Asia have been connected to histories of class, caste, colonial influence, and social prestige. Their persistence is visible in advertising, matrimonial preferences, beauty marketing, and popular entertainment.
Romantic cinema has sometimes reinforced these hierarchies by presenting fair skin as an unquestioned sign of beauty. Such representations can influence how people interpret their own attractiveness and whether they believe they will be considered desirable by potential partners.
The industry’s relationship with fairness has not remained static. Public conversations about colorism have increasingly challenged the assumption that lighter skin should be the universal beauty standard.
In 2020, Hindustan Unilever announced that its Fair & Lovely brand would be renamed Glow & Lovely following wider scrutiny of fairness-oriented beauty marketing. The change reflected a broader cultural debate, although renaming a product could not automatically eliminate the social expectations behind it.
Bollywood’s responsibility extends beyond removing discriminatory dialogue. Casting, lighting, camera treatment, promotional photography, and the range of people allowed to occupy romantic roles also communicate ideas about beauty.
If darker-skinned actors consistently receive supporting roles while lighter-skinned actors dominate romantic leads, the overall pattern can reinforce a hierarchy without explicitly discussing complexion.
Progress therefore requires sustained visibility and meaningful romantic storylines for actors across skin tones. The objective is not to replace one complexion ideal with another, but to challenge the expectation that skin color should determine romantic possibilities.
The Male Body: Muscularity, Masculinity, and Emotional Worth
Discussions about body image in Bollywood frequently focus on actresses, but romantic films also shape expectations about men’s bodies.
The Hindi film hero has occupied several physical archetypes. Some are slender and expressive, while others emphasize muscularity, height, athletic movement, or commanding screen presence.
In contemporary commercial cinema, the muscular male body has become especially visible through action films and fitness-oriented publicity. This visibility can influence romantic expectations by associating physical strength with confidence, masculinity, and sexual desirability.
Such representations become restrictive when muscularity appears necessary for romantic success. Men who do not possess conventionally athletic bodies may feel pressured to alter their appearance before believing they deserve attention.
These expectations can also limit emotional expression. The idealized male lead is frequently expected to be physically strong while concealing vulnerability.
Yet Bollywood has never relied on a single masculine image. Shah Rukh Khan’s romantic persona, for example, has often depended on expressive gestures, verbal charm, and emotional intensity. His performance in Veer-Zaara (2004) demonstrates how romantic masculinity can be constructed through devotion rather than physical dominance alone.
Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) provides another perspective by examining how social prejudice affects both partners in a marriage.
The film challenges assumptions about women’s bodies while exposing how men can reproduce damaging expectations about attractiveness. Its broader lesson is that body prejudice does not affect only one gender.
Inclusive romance would allow men to be desirable without requiring standardized physiques and would portray strength as compatible with vulnerability, care, and emotional accountability.
Dum Laga Ke Haisha
: Challenging the Beauty Hierarchy
Released in 2015, Dum Laga Ke Haisha offers a particularly revealing case study of body-related prejudice in mainstream Hindi romance.
The film follows Prem, played by Ayushmann Khurrana, and Sandhya, played by Bhumi Pednekar. Their arranged marriage is complicated by Prem’s discomfort with the match and the social expectations surrounding his wife’s appearance.
Sandhya is an educated woman whose body size becomes an unjustly dominant factor in how her husband and the surrounding community evaluate her.
The central conflict is not simply whether Prem finds Sandhya attractive. It is whether he can recognize her as a person rather than treating her body as evidence that the marriage has failed his expectations.
Romantic films frequently present attraction as instantaneous. When physical preference becomes an obstacle, some narratives resolve the problem through a makeover that brings the supposedly undesirable character closer to conventional beauty standards.
Dum Laga Ke Haisha instead places prejudice within the everyday structures of marriage, embarrassment, family pressure, and public judgment.
Prem’s discomfort reflects a society in which men’s status can be influenced by the perceived attractiveness of their wives. Sandhya consequently faces both personal rejection and the humiliation of having her body evaluated by people who believe they are entitled to judge it.
Her characterization extends beyond this treatment. She is intelligent, articulate, resilient, and capable of challenging the assumptions made about her.
The film’s wrestling-inspired climax transforms the body from an object of visual judgment into a source of physical action and shared experience. The race does not magically erase the couple’s problems, but it creates an opportunity for cooperation and a different understanding of one another.
Importantly, Sandhya’s worth is not established through a conventional weight-loss transformation. Instead, the relationship must change because Prem’s understanding of her must change.
The film is not a perfect representation of body inclusivity, since appearance remains central to its conflict. Nevertheless, it brings a recognizable prejudice into mainstream romantic storytelling and invites audiences to question the assumptions beneath it.
Its achievement lies in showing that body-inclusive romance need not pretend attraction is simple. It can examine how desire is shaped by social pressure, learned prejudice, and the willingness to recognize another person’s humanity.
The Makeover Narrative: Does Love Require Transformation?
One of Bollywood’s enduring romantic conventions is the makeover.
A character initially portrayed as awkward, unfashionable, or insufficiently attractive receives a new hairstyle, wardrobe, or change in presentation. The transformation then coincides with increased romantic attention or social acceptance.
Makeovers can be empowering. Clothing and personal styling allow people to experiment with identity, express confidence, and discover new aspects of themselves.
The problem arises when transformation becomes the condition for being loved.
If a narrative repeatedly rewards characters only after they change their appearance, it implies that their original selves were not worthy of romantic consideration.
This pattern is particularly damaging when the supposed flaw is a natural physical characteristic rather than a chosen style. Changing an outfit is different from suggesting that someone must alter their body size, skin tone, or physical features to become desirable.
The makeover convention also appears in international cinema, including Hollywood romantic comedies and television dramas. Its appeal lies in the speed with which appearance can communicate change.
However, this visual shortcut can obscure a deeper issue: a character may gain confidence because society begins approving of them, rather than because they learn to value themselves independently of other people’s judgments.
A stronger romantic narrative distinguishes between changing one’s presentation and changing one’s worth.
Characters should be free to enjoy fashion, makeup, grooming, and fitness without implying that these activities are obligations imposed by romantic prospects. They should also be allowed to remain physically unchanged while experiencing affection and personal growth.
Sometimes the most meaningful transformation in a love story occurs when one character stops evaluating another through inherited beauty standards.
Beyond Thinness: What Body Inclusivity Requires
Body inclusivity is sometimes reduced to introducing a character who differs from the dominant beauty ideal. Although representation matters, genuine inclusion requires more.
A fuller-bodied heroine should not appear exclusively as a comic friend or as someone whose entire storyline revolves around losing weight. She should be able to experience flirtation, confidence, heartbreak, jealousy, and romantic fulfillment.
Similarly, thin characters should not automatically be portrayed as shallow or morally inferior. Inclusivity is not achieved by reversing the hierarchy and creating a different group that deserves less sympathy.
The objective is to separate physical appearance from moral character.
Romantic storytelling becomes more inclusive when bodies are treated as ordinary aspects of human diversity rather than shorthand for virtue, failure, discipline, or social worth.
This requires attention to narrative agency. Does a character have desires beyond being accepted by a romantic partner? Can they reject a relationship without being portrayed as having failed? Are they allowed to be sexually confident without ridicule?
A film might include a fuller-bodied character while repeatedly using their appearance for humor. Another might celebrate an unconventional couple while suggesting that one partner deserves praise for overlooking the other’s body.
Such stories expand visibility without fully challenging the hierarchy of desirability.
The deeper shift occurs when the audience is invited to accept a relationship without being asked to congratulate one partner for choosing the other.
Love becomes inclusive when a person’s body is no longer treated as an exception requiring explanation.
Comedy, Class, and the Cost of Looking Desirable
Bollywood comedy has sometimes used appearance as a shortcut to humor. Jokes about weight, height, complexion, baldness, and facial features can establish a character’s social position before the story develops them as individuals.
When a character’s body repeatedly generates laughter, romantic acceptance may appear surprising or implausible. The audience is encouraged to view the character’s appearance as a problem the eventual relationship must overcome.
Comedy can also expose the absurdity of prejudice. The difference depends on whether the joke targets the individual for their body or reveals the cruelty of a society that treats physical differences as reasons for humiliation.
This distinction matters because humor can normalize stereotypes even when viewers reject openly discriminatory statements.
Romantic films also frequently present polished appearances as effortless. Characters appear in immaculate clothing, professional makeup, and carefully designed environments without showing the financial resources and labor supporting those images.
Audiences may compare themselves with stars whose appearances are shaped by stylists, makeup artists, designers, lighting professionals, and substantial production budgets.
In South Asia, these pressures intersect with colorism, gender expectations, and marriage-related judgments. Women may face pressure to appear attractive to protect family reputation or improve perceived marriage prospects. Men may experience expectations concerning height, fitness, grooming, and financial capability.
A more nuanced cinematic approach recognizes that people have different relationships with beauty practices. Makeup may be creative expression for one person, a professional expectation for another, and an unwanted burden for someone else.
Body inclusivity therefore requires freedom of choice, rather than replacing one rigid standard with another.
Social Media and the New Culture of Comparison
Social media has transformed the relationship between Bollywood romance and body image.
Audiences now encounter stars through photographs, promotional campaigns, short videos, interviews, and fan edits. The constant circulation of celebrity images can blur the distinction between a fictional character and a public persona.
A romantic scene may be carefully staged, but an actor’s promotional photographs can become everyday benchmarks for attractiveness. Viewers can move from a film to beauty tutorials, fitness content, and celebrity imagery within minutes.
For some people, these platforms provide inspiration and community. Fans celebrate different forms of beauty, discuss representation, and challenge outdated cinematic conventions.
For others, repeated exposure to highly curated imagery can intensify dissatisfaction, particularly when professionally produced images are treated as realistic standards for everyday appearance.
The effects vary between individuals, and not every viewer experiences the same harm. Nevertheless, constant comparison can make appearance feel increasingly measurable and publicly accountable.
Digital culture also gives audiences tools to question cinema. Fan communities and online discussions can make overlooked representations more visible and encourage studios to recognize that audiences may want more diverse romantic stories.
Bollywood’s influence therefore operates in two directions. Films shape digital conversations, while audience responses can challenge the assumptions that filmmakers have traditionally taken for granted.
Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Global Conversation About Love
Bollywood’s body narratives are rooted in South Asian histories, family structures, and social expectations, but the relationship between romance and physical desirability is international.
Hollywood romantic comedies have frequently relied on makeover plots and conventionally attractive leads. East Asian romantic dramas have also explored tensions between idealized beauty, celebrity culture, and the social pressures surrounding relationships.
These comparisons reveal shared concerns without making every cultural context identical.
Skin tone, body size, and expectations surrounding marriage carry different historical meanings in India, the United States, South Korea, and Europe. Bollywood cannot simply import a Western body-positive vocabulary and assume every local problem has been addressed.
A meaningful response must recognize South Asian experiences of colorism, family expectations, gendered respectability, and the relationship between appearance and marriageability.
At the same time, international representation movements offer useful questions: Who is allowed to be a romantic lead? Whose desire is treated as legitimate? Which characters can experience sexual confidence without punishment?
Bollywood can remain culturally specific while expanding the physical diversity of its romantic protagonists. Indian languages, music, family traditions, and regional settings are entirely compatible with inclusive storytelling.
Indeed, representing a wider range of bodies can strengthen cultural storytelling by allowing more people to recognize themselves in the films that reflect their lives.
The Psychological Impact of Romantic Representation
Cinema does not determine how every viewer thinks or behaves. Audiences interpret films through their own experiences, relationships, and cultural environments. Nevertheless, repeated representation can influence the standards people use to evaluate themselves and others.
Social comparison is one relevant psychological process. When viewers repeatedly encounter idealized bodies associated with happiness and romantic success, they may compare their appearance with those images.
For some, the comparison is enjoyable or motivating. For others, it can intensify dissatisfaction, particularly when cinematic images are treated as realistic benchmarks rather than constructed performances.
Romantic narratives can also influence expectations about relationships. If characters are consistently valued for appearance, viewers may begin interpreting physical attractiveness as a prerequisite for affection.
Representation can provide an alternative. Seeing someone with a similar body experience love, admiration, and intimacy may challenge the belief that certain physical characteristics make a person inherently unlovable.
However, visibility alone is insufficient. A character who exists only to teach others a lesson about acceptance may still feel distant from the audience.
People need characters who experience ordinary relationship complications, including misunderstandings, attraction, disappointment, joy, and growth.
The psychological value of inclusive romance lies in reducing the isolation that emerges when entire groups rarely see their experiences treated as normal.
What Bollywood Can Do Differently
The future of inclusive romance requires changes in casting, storytelling, production, and marketing.
First, filmmakers can broaden the physical diversity of romantic leads, creating opportunities for actors across body sizes, skin tones, ages, and physical abilities to occupy central roles.
Second, scripts can move beyond the makeover as a universal solution. Confidence should not depend entirely on becoming more conventionally attractive, and a relationship should not require physical transformation before audiences accept it.
Third, filmmakers can challenge body shaming through believable disagreements, changing assumptions, and meaningful consequences rather than turning every film into a lecture.
Fourth, cinematography should not reserve romantic close-ups, tender gestures, and visually intimate scenes exclusively for conventionally attractive performers. Camera treatment itself communicates who is allowed to be desired.
Finally, promotional campaigns should reflect the diversity of the films they represent. An inclusive storyline loses some of its cultural force if its marketing returns to a narrow ideal of beauty.
These changes do not require every film to address every dimension of inclusion. Romantic comedies can remain lighthearted, historical dramas can prioritize their settings, and musicals can celebrate glamour.
The objective is to expand the industry’s creative possibilities so that inclusion becomes a natural feature of storytelling rather than an occasional exception.
Conclusion: Expanding the Meaning of Being Loved
Bollywood romance has long offered audiences a dream of love, but the bodies permitted to inhabit that dream have not always reflected the diversity of the people watching.
Conventional beauty standards have influenced casting, characterization, humor, and the emotional meaning attached to romantic success. These patterns have intersected with colorism, gender expectations, class, age, and assumptions about physical ability.
Yet cinema also possesses the capacity to question the ideals it helps circulate.
When a fuller-bodied heroine experiences attraction without undergoing a makeover, when a woman discovers fulfillment beyond romantic approval, or when a male protagonist demonstrates vulnerability without losing his desirability, the possibilities of romance expand.
The industry’s future should not depend on replacing one ideal body with another. It should create space for a wider range of bodies, personalities, relationships, and experiences to become central to romantic storytelling.
The goal is not to insist that appearance never matters or that every character must be attracted to everyone. Human desire is personal and complicated. The goal is to challenge the assumption that one narrow physical ideal should determine who receives romantic attention, who deserves tenderness, and whose relationship audiences are expected to celebrate.
A cinematic world becomes more inclusive when viewers no longer need to suspend disbelief to imagine someone with an unconventional body falling in love.
It becomes more inclusive when that person’s romance is allowed to be just another love story: complicated, imperfect, joyful, and entirely worthy of being told.
Sources: The Hindu, The Indian Express, BBC, Hindustan Times, Film Companion, Vogue India, The Guardian, Variety, The New York Times, UNICEF
