Indian Stunners

When Sushmita Sen, the first Indian to be chosen Miss Universe, made her triumphant return to the subcontinent after the 1994 pageant, there were victory processions, gala parties and countless interviews. For fans like Yukta Mookhey, a teenager growing up in a middle-class suburb of Bombay, Sushmita was living a dream: she had been wrenched from an ordinary life and forged by the blast furnace of glamour and fame into a celebrity. Yukta, then 15, told her family that she too would one day wear a glittering crown. Her parents smiled at her adolescent fantasies, talked about college and dismissed the whimsical ambition. But Yukta sulked and threw tantrums and eventually persuaded her father to support her participation in the 1999 Miss India contest. She won that title and later became Miss World, planting fantasies, no doubt, in the minds of other teenage Indian girls. Now those kids have even more inspiration to draw from. Last week another Indian, Lara Dutta, who was chosen this year's Miss Universe, came home to glorious parties and photo ops.

The unprecedented run of global titles--in the past six years, five Indians have won the coveted Miss Universe or Miss World crowns while four others were runners-up--has spawned a beauty boom in a country where only a generation ago women in the glamour business were considered licentious. Now, conservative middle-class dads urge their daughters into bikinis, and moms put them on high-protein diets intended (perhaps naively) to help them achieve the ramp-mandatory 5-ft. 7-in. height requirement. The organizer of the annual Miss India contest, the Times of India group of newspapers and magazines, reports receiving applications by the sackful. Eventually, 600 hopefuls will be chosen for the elimination rounds, and just 30 will make it to the final show. But the deluge of applicants continues. "People have definitely become very, very aspirational," says Pradeep Guha, president of the Times group, who decides on the shortlist. "I have had parents come in and cry, plead, threaten and even exert political pressure to push their child."

The appeal is obvious. Once noticed, the young women immediately find a place in the world of modeling and acting. Pageant sponsors often offer lucrative endorsement deals. Several beauty queens are now top movie stars in Bollywood.

But for every successful Yukta or Lara who goes on to tear-drenched smiles as she receives her bouquet and tiara, thousands of other hopefuls end up humiliated and exploited. More and more young men and women are signing up with costly, dubious Indian modeling institutes, where a two-week session and a photo portfolio can run up to $1,000. The desire to break through to the beauty elite can force women into unsavory situations. Anorexia and steroid abuse are increasing. There are many stories of fixed contests, nepotism and the casting couch. "Most of our people are out-of-towners," says Atul Kelkar, a manager of Smiles, a Bombay model-training agency. "I tell them that the amount of trouble you get into is directly proportional to your desperation."