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The glamour quotient
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What is this Page Three culture all about? Is it about attitude? And has Chennai arrived? GEETA DOCTOR finds out.
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DOES CHENNAI have a Page Three culture? If you have to ask: what's a Page Three culture, stop reading this now. Even reading about Page Three is injurious to the health. It sends the old pulse racing at full tilt. It titillates the senses in a manner that justifies all the worst-ever predictions of the guardians of morality. It giftwraps people so that they become a commodity. Or unwraps them so that they become objects of desire. It advertises a way of life that is so artificial and alien to the actual needs of ordinary readers, it launches a hundred writers of angry letters to the Editor, who then commissions his, or her, leader writers to denounce the evils of `globalisation'. It's entirely to be condemned by the great and the good. It's also great fun.
We have to admit it... Page Three is where the old order ends and the MTV generation comes rushing in. Page Three is where women stop being mere women and become va-va-voom girls, or to put it plainly, Bimbos. Men become guys, who then morph into hunks as in the phrase, ``Handsome hunk John Abraham was seen sporting a 30-hour stubble!'' The inference here is that he's starting a new trend. His stubble has been extended from a 24 hour one to a 30 hour one. Monitoring such statistics is far more important to Page Three readers than watching the progress of the monsoon.
No matter what the sex, everyone on Page Three must also have one qualifying feature: attitude.
Was it Conrad Hilton who said, ``Attitude! Attitude! Attitude!'' when asked to define what made a hotel successful? Probably not. He was more interested in location. Page Three is a location with attitude. Chennai has been somewhat low in the location department, at least till now. It's synonymous with Rama and Sita going into exile. It's always been a Deccan plateau too far from the centre of power. A place that's good enough to have laughs about the sartorial style affected by its politicians, with their stone rattling names and the idli-white fairness of its heroines, who can only make good when they reach Bollywood, is not exactly Page Three material.
On the other hand, Chennai's export potential as the place that sent a musical genius to London and a successful Presidential candidate to Delhi in the same month can no longer be ignored. Both are persons with long hair, you will notice, a pre-requisite for anyone remotely interested in displaying attitude. You have to be able to toss off-the-cuff remarks along with your hair. Or like A. R. Rahman, just keep shaking the curls while saying nothing at all, accompanied perhaps by a snap or two of the thumb and index finger. That adds to the aura of the enigmatic Tamil type.
You have to keep people guessing as to whether you shampoo, colour wash, blow-dry, finger dry or just towel dry your tresses, with or without the help of a well-known hairdresser, because it's on such trivia that a Page Three character is made. Both these men are apparently un-concerned about what they wear. This is actually the beginning of what is called style. Original style. Maybe one day, it will be called the Chennai style, a variety of anti-style, style. Not having style can actually be an asset, the Chennai USP.
This, by the way, is how the Page Three profile emerges. It just needs one enterprising editor, enough advertising to support a full page and a room-full of people who are willing to lend their reputations as the leaders of fashion and entertainment. This is where hair-stylists, beauticians, psychotherapists and personal trainers come into the picture. Include the fashion photographer in the list, for the lens is the gun of the fashion creator. Power comes from a well aimed ``shoot'' and a Sharad Haksar now advertises himself just as unselfconsciously as the products that he promotes at the Gemini Circle, the outdoor hoarding equivalent of the Page Three phenomenon.
``I can't stir out without my therapist,'' confesses a wannabe Page Three personality. If not the Prozac toting therapist, the hair-stylist or personal trainer will do just as well. Where before the budding actress or dancer never appeared in public without a pistol-packing mama to keep the curious at bay, today's celebrities sweep in with a retinue of image makers, who are themselves famous for providing services that add to the glamour of a person's image. This is where it helps if you are in the service industry. Chefs are seen as the cutting edge (pun to be excused) of the cocktail and nibbles set, particularly if they can nibble at the hostess's ear with the same style that they stuff a mushroom with Camembert. Hoteliers who throw PR bashes used to be a good bet for creating a Page Three setting, but since September 11 they have been forced to keep an eye on the guest list, and include only bankers, travel agents or leather barons or garment exporters, their skills are being wasted these days.
This is true of almost anyone in the arts, theatre personalities, artists and would you believe it, even art dealers, who at one time practically decided who could or could not be seen on the Page Three track. No one buys art anymore. On the other hand, diamond merchants and jewellers are in, for as one society lady announced, ``When the economy is really bad, what can you do except invest in diamonds? That's why you see these merchants at our parties.''
This is where the hairdressers troupe in, for no matter how un-cool a person might be, he or she has recognised the need for a well-groomed head of hair in the television era. Page Three celebrities need only to be seen from the shoulders up, whether at parties or photo-ops. The famous trick of being seen between two equally well-known persons who are kissing you on both cheeks on either side, as you beam into the camera, while simultaneously thrusting out your décolletage, as it is known in Page Three parlance, works best if you have a gorgeous head of hair as well.
This is called the Trimurti of Page Three fame. Quite often, the other two are persons who belong to competing political parties or are rivals in business, or are famous surgeons. In this case, the person in the middle acts as a go-between, a type of human shield that allows the two conflicting parties to actually kiss each other through a third party. Sometimes, they might even whisper, ``You do the right ventricle, I'll take the left!'' This is generally the very height of Third Page savvy.
The different types of social kissing are actually worthy of a chapter all by itself. We shall not get into it here, except to note that the Chennai method consists of one woman pinching the cheeks of a rival and saying, ``How sweet!"
Does this make for a healthy Page Three tradition? It's difficult to agree on this at such an early stage. It shows that people are still conservative when it comes to making public displays of affection, let alone advertising their wealth, health or love life.
Notice for instance, how almost any person of any social standing will only travel in a car with dark windows in Chennai. This is not the sign of a culture that is willing to parade itself, no matter how lavishly people might like to party these days.
``I think we live in a highly layered society'' explained one gentleman when asked to share his view of whether Chennai had arrived.
``We may actually be as liberated or fashionable as people in the rest of the country, but we are certainly not willing to let ourselves be seen having fun. It's happening, but we are not yet open about it.''
``It think Chennai is changing very fast,'' says Vivek Pipersania of Ford Motor Car Company. ``Because I believe it has to. You can't attract the kind of people, young professionals from all over the world, if you can't provide them with a more international flavour for them to unwind."
He quotes a study where the person talks about a culture of tolerance that means encouraging different type of behaviour, in clothes, in fashion, in consumption, that is all part of a coming of age process, that Chennai is going through.
``You can't have the kind of dreams that you see taking shape at the Tidel Park, of making this the IT destination of the South, if you are not prepared provide a different lifestyle also,'' he adds.
``I hope it never changes'' says a Page Three candidate who appears regularly in all the Mumbai papers, ``Because I can always party when I'm there, but when I am here, I feel I am home. I don't need this kind of publicity.''
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