Cultural Impact
Sharmila Tagore's appearance in a bikini in An Evening in Paris set off a cultural wave in India and the film's claim of first bikini appearance of an Indian actress remains one of its most notable aspects. She also posed in a bikini for the glossy Filmfare magazine. The costume shocked the conservative Indian audience, but it also set a trend of bikini-clad actresses carried forward by Parveen Babi (in Yeh Nazdeekiyan, 1982), Zeenat Aman (in Heera Panna 1973; Qurbani, 1980) and Dimple Kapadia (in Bobby, 1973) in the early 1970s. Wearing a bikini put her name in the Indian press as one of Bollywood's ten hottest actresses of all time, and was a transgression of female identity through a reversal of the state of modesty, which functions as a signifier of femininity in Bombay films. But, when Tagore was the chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification, she expressed concerns about the rise of the bikini in Indian films.
Read more about this topic: An Evening In Paris
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