Style check meter

Given the long hours of load shedding, bumpy dusty narrow roads, frequent stikes, fuel shortage etc etc, we are bound to cringe at the sorry state of our country. But when I look at our ever stagnant Nepali film industry and the lack lustrous fashion scene, I find one more reason to cringe even more.

Come Friday and we have people of all ages thronging at newspaper stands to get their copy of a very popular Nepali weekly tabloid. I myself was one of its avid readers until a few years back. As a kid I used to read its kid section and my mom used to force me to fill out the crossword puzzle (which I never won). I even used to paste pictures of the featured models. Those were the days when pretty faces (sans the hideous dress) used to adorn the coveted page. Then began the time when girls of all sizes (including the hideously bulky in the most fitting dresses) began making rounds in those very pages.

The number of girls dying to get into the field of glitz and glamour are on the rise. Rising number of fashion columns in print media, astounding number of websites dedicated to promote fresh faces, numerous beauty pageants have definitely been a boon for aspiring models. However, the competition has become tough. Fresh faces vying to get noticed seem to have been living by the mantra of ‘lesser the better’ when it comes to clothes and ‘more the better’ when it comes to skin show. Our numerous websites and tabloids are testimony to it.

There are plenty of aspiring models who pose and expose hideously. “Eww !” is the first reaction when we look at those scantily dressed girls. But since there are plenty of them we forget them soon after. And then we have our most talked about actress Rekha Thapa whose style quotient overpowers every hideously dressed model. She would probably be the first person fashion police would get hold of. Lord help that lady with a sensible stylist! Totally understandable is their not so celeb status with just an okay paycheck. But hey, style doesn’t always have to equalize to more moola!

Giving everyone a fair chance is something good, but just because someone is ready for plenty of skin show with the most (disgustingly) suggestive poses doesn’t mean the paper needs to compromise with its standard. The same thing applies for a host of up and coming and even the most established websites. Maybe because we are so used to seeing the picture perfect images adorning the pages and screens of international media, we totally freak out and are embarrassed beyond words by our local models and celebrities who seem to have lost their mind. Ladies (and sometimes even gentlemen) please check yourself out in the mirror before coming in the public eye