What is a blouse? Google offers a simple definition: "a piece of clothing like a shirt, worn by women." Indian cinema, however, has spent decades assigning meanings to it that go far beyond fabric and thread and continues to do so, even as our understanding of women's clothing evolves. A fitting place to begin is 33 years ago, when Madhuri Dixit donned an embroidered ghagra-choli in Khal Nayak and danced to the tunes of the now-iconic "Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai". The song's provocative question, "What's behind the blouse?", sparked accusations of vulgarity in 1993. Three decades later, that debate hasn't disappeared; it has merely found newer blouses to police.
Today, this conversation has gained newfound life in the sartorial choices for characters in Nitesh Tiwari's Ramayana: Part 1. While Sai Pallavi's Sita can be seen wearing a boat-neck blouse with sleeves up to her elbow, with absolutely no skin show, Soorpanakha, portrayed by Rakul Preet Singh, is seen wearing an uttariya and an antariya, bejewelled nonetheless. The internet was quick to catch the visual contrast as an attempt to associate Soorpanakha's costume—complete with bare shoulders and midriff—with a villainous, immoral, and salacious woman desiring another's husband. On the other hand, Sita's character is made clear with the visual grammar that comes as a package deal with her costume design.
Given Ramayana's casting, pan-India marketing, budget and staging, the makers' questionable costume design has provoked a lot of discussions online. Meanwhile, even as the makers are still trying to put forth their arguments behind their choice, a more problematic Tamil "family-entertainer", which was a blockbuster hit at the theatres, made its Netflix premiere, and hasn't faced the backlash it truly deserves.
Gatta Kusthi 2, starring Vishnuu Vishal and Aishwarya Lekshmi, was the follow-up to Gatta Kusthi, which was about a man trying to unlearn his misogynistic ideologies in order to support his wrestler wife's career. While the first film wasn't exactly the women's empowerment film it proclaimed to be, the sequel is pretty much a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is a misogynistic film, draped in a "but-hey-I-am-a-feminist-house-husband" veshti.
Gatta Kusthi 2 ended with Vishnuu Vishal's Veera promising to support his wife, Keerthi, in becoming a national-level wrestler. In the sequel, he is a homemaker, supporting his wife, and a doting dad to their daughter. But what the film does with it is problematic on so many different levels. When we first see the house-husband Veera in the sequel, he is trying to make his way through various housewives to fetch a pail of water. And how does he successfully make his way? By pinching the waist of one of the women. That's our introduction to the progressive husband.
Of all the problems in the film, though, there's one that needs prime focus. And that's where the blouse comes back into conversation. The sequel introduces a new character, Meenu, a primary school teacher essayed by Mokksha. She's everything Aishwarya Lekshmi's Keerthi isn't. She has long hair and a light skin tone, is more stereotypically feminine, and… she always wears a sleeveless blouse.
A married, wife-supporting, house-chore-occupied Veera flirts with Meenu at their very first interaction because he has a fetish for long hair. And Keerthi, when their daughter informs her about this encounter, is shockingly understanding about her husband's weakness. In fact, instead of confronting Veera, we see Keerthi being pitted against Meenu.
The problem isn't that Meenu wears sleeveless blouses. It's that the film repeatedly frames them as visual shorthand for desirability and temptation. Her wardrobe exists less as an expression of her personality than as a cue for the audience to see her through Veera's wandering eyes (read male gaze). While the film doesn't outrightly villainise her, she is positioned as the woman who threatens another woman's marriage (a nod to Soorpanakha?). For context, Meenu pecks Veera on the cheek in one instance and is carried on his hip by him in another. And, after the character serves her purpose of stirring the relationship between the husband and wife, she disappears from the film. But don't worry, misogyny doesn't.
Veera's neighbour Partha (Karunakaran) is portrayed as an insecure man who keeps doubting his wife's intention when she speaks to Veera. Partha is a busy railway employee who travels for days at a time as part of his job. The film repeatedly nudges viewers towards suspecting that Partha's wife is unfaithful whenever her husband is away. Every interaction between Veera and her is captured from a rather lustful angle to show how it is seen through Partha's eyes. And guess what? She's also always wearing sleeveless designer blouses.
All this talk about the blouse takes me back to Angammal, a film about a woman's resistance to wearing one in rural Tamil Nadu. Throughout the film, Geetha Kailasam's Angammal is forced by her son to wear one before meeting his lover's family because he thinks it is a showcase of modernity. When she finally gives in for her son's sake, his fiancée comes wearing a sleeveless blouse. Ironically, Angammal's older daughter-in-law, who insisted that Angammal must wear a blouse to appear 'civilized ', says, "The girl seems sweet. But I wonder why she has worn such a short blouse. She could have stitched it fully to fit her better.” Women just can't win at all.
So whose blouse is it anyway? Why does the sleeveless blouse so often end up on women coded as 'bold', 'modern', 'dangerous', 'badass', 'villainous', or simply sexually confident? Why is a garment expected to carry the burden of signalling morality at all? The answer came from Madhuri Dixit herself earlier this year, Maa Behen. In the film, the sleeveless blouse is a character. It is used to judge Madhuri's Rekha as a promiscuous, man-luring 'daayan'. The judgement even affects her daughters, the older of whom, Jaya (Triptii Dimri), chooses the traditional married-woman ensemble for most of the film to prove the apple can fall far from the tree. But when the same Jaya, due to internalised misogyny, finally breaks down and questions her mother about her sartorial choice, Rekha gives the most practical answer. "It's always hot around here."
Maybe Google had it right all along. A blouse is just "a piece of clothing like a shirt, worn by women." The rest – morality, temptation, virtue, promiscuity and villainy – isn't stitched into the fabric. It's stitched into the screenplay. Perhaps the real question was never "What's behind the blouse?" It is, and always has been: who's looking at it... and why?