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SPOTLIGHT: THE ‘THICC’ HEROINE
Growing up in the ’90s, one of my guilty pleasures was scanning the film ads in newspapers. Punjabi and Pashto cinema posters jumped out: heroines poured into shiny, tight-fitting dresses, men strutting around with curly wigs and moustaches so thick they looked like props. It was loud, garish, and larger than life.
Back then, I didn’t think too deeply about it. It was just part of the cinematic wallpaper of the era. Until one day in my late teens, I found myself standing outside Capri Cinema in Karachi with a group of friends. The house was full, no tickets to be had. We needed to kill time, so we barged into a nearby cinema showing a Pashto film instead.
What unfolded inside had us half-laughing, half-gaping in awe. The sheer size of the women on screen, the glittering costumes, the exaggerated dances, and the camera angles zooming in places you didn’t expect — everything was amplified, excessive, unapologetic. For us, it was a comedy of excess.
Much later in life, I realised it wasn’t random, nor was it simply bad filmmaking. There was a pattern, a recurring thread. The obsession with heavy-set women in Punjabi and Pashto cinema wasn’t accidental — it was cultural, even primal.
The obsession with heavy-set women in Punjabi and Pashto cinema isn’t accidental. It is cultural, even primal. Abundance, fertility and desire are all embodied in the form of the heroine
And it wasn’t unique to Pakistan either. Pulp cinema across the world, especially films catering to resource-scarce or working-class audiences, echoed the same theme: abundance, fertility and desire, all embodied in the form of “thicc” heroines.
There’s an old anthropological truth: in societies where food scarcity is the norm, fat isn’t shameful. It’s aspirational. It means survival, health, fertility. A fuller female body was historically coded as capable of bearing children and carrying life. Thinness, by contrast, often meant illness or famine.
Cinema, especially the kind targeted at the masses, absorbed this instinct. For the urban elite, thinness might symbolise sophistication, but for truck drivers, farmers and daily-wage labourers cramming into small town theatres, desire was expressed in fuller forms. The “thicc heroine” wasn’t just a woman on screen — she was abundance made flesh, a rebellion against hunger itself.
Punjabi cinema thrived on earthy excess. Actresses such as Anjuman and Mumtaz weren’t cast in spite of their size; they were celebrated for it. Their dances carried the weight of rural sensuality, their curves wrapped in sequined dupattas and figure-hugging suits. Folk songs had already paved the way, they were sung about long before they were filmed.
The heroes, meanwhile, were caricatures of rural masculinity — curly wigs, chest-thumping moustaches, and dialogue delivery that shook the stage. But they revolved around the heroine’s body. Without her, they were incomplete.
If Punjabi films flirted with excess, Pashto films dove headfirst into it. The mujra sequences became infamous: close-ups, shimmering outfits, voluptuous heroines filling the frame. Actresses such as Mussarat Shaheen built entire careers out of this aesthetic, their bodies and dances unapologetically central to the experience.
Pashto cinema catered to a primarily male, working-class audience — truck drivers, daily-wage earners, men seeking escapism after gruelling days. For them, these heroines weren’t “fat”. They were desirable, real, raw. The camera lingered on every curve because that’s what the audience demanded.
The men on screen, with their oversized moustaches and rifles slung over their shoulders, projected power. But the women — heavyset, glittering and defiant — embodied the ultimate fantasy: fertility and indulgence in a world where life was often harsh and unforgiving.
This obsession with curves isn’t unique to Pakistan. Travel across the pulp traditions of the world and you’ll see the same archetype. In the Blaxploitation films of 1970s United States, Pam Grier, with her busty frame and fierce attitude, became an icon. Mexican ficheras films in the 1970s and ’80s were cabaret-style pulp, where voluptuous women in glittering dresses became the entire selling point.
Nollywood in Nigeria still celebrates the “orobo” — slang for fat women — as desirable, often mocking skinny women. Turkish Yeşilçam cinema placed lush, maternal actresses such as Türkan Şoray at the centre of national imagination, while Egyptian films of the 1950s to ’70s made belly dancers such as Naima Akef household names. Even rustic Italian pulp comedies leaned on the trope of the wide-hipped, fiery peasant woman. In all these cases, cinema that catered to the masses leaned toward curves. The “skinny beauty” was reserved for highbrow or Westernised productions.
Why does this divide exist? Because cinema mirrors aspiration. The urban elite aspire to the Western standard: thin, toned, cosmopolitan. Their films reflect that fantasy. The working class, meanwhile, dreams of indulgence and fertility — a world where scarcity is erased by the heroine’s overflowing body.
To laugh at these films, as we did in our teens, is to miss the point. What looked like absurdity — odd camera angles, glittering outfits, oversized women dancing without restraint — was, in fact, a visual shorthand for life itself. These films were telling their audience: you may be poor, you may live with scarcity, but here is abundance, here is fertility, here is desire in its most unashamed form.
Today, in the age of Instagram influencers, body image debates have become globalised. Fitness culture prizes toned stomachs and sculpted figures. Yet the word “thicc” has made a comeback, ironically first as internet slang, now as a full-fledged trend. Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé, and countless others have rebranded curves into aspirational aesthetics.
But there’s a crucial difference. In pulp cinema, thiccness wasn’t curated or surgically enhanced. It was organic, sometimes awkward, always real. The glittering costumes of Punjabi mujras and the gaudy close-ups of Pashto pulp didn’t present “perfect” bodies. They presented bodies as they were: heavy, sweating, moving, alive.
I often think back to that day outside Capri Cinema. We laughed as the Pashto heroine swirled on screen, her body moving with a rhythm unfamiliar to our teenage eyes. But what seemed comical then was actually a raw truth: cinema doesn’t just tell stories, it projects desires.
And pulp cinema, whether in Peshawar or Mexico City, understood one thing better than the polished elite productions ever could: in a world marked by scarcity, nothing is more desirable than abundance.
The thicc heroine, shimmering under the hot studio lights, wasn’t just dancing for applause. She was dancing as a reminder that life, in all its excess, still existed.
The writer is a banker based in Lahore. X: @suhaibayaz
Published in Dawn, ICON, October 12th, 2025
Maliha Azami Aga’s paintings, recently showcased during the exhibition ‘Alternate Reality’ at the Ejaz Art Gallery in Lahore, are characterised by vivid colours, dynamic brushstrokes and profound emotional depth.
They offer more than just visual splendour, inviting viewers to see the world through her unique perspective. Her palette — vivid fuchsia pinks, charged blues and pulsating yellows — interacts in a kaleidoscopic manner that splashes across the canvas, seizing the space and holding the viewer’s attention.
Aga’s Midnight Sun captures the rare phenomenon of luminosity at night, symbolising the inner self that burns like a midnight sun — defiant and illuminating. In contrast, the vast black sky haunts as a silent witness to the eerie stillness of night. A rare and rhythmic orchestration of hues — fuchsia, turquoise, orange, bold reds and emerald — seem to vibrate across the canvas. There is a feeling of urgent movement and restlessness in the strokes.
I see two distinct metaphors emerge from this painting. One is a celebration — the radiant illumination of the inner self, shining like a midnight sun through darkness. The other is far more haunting: the blood of innocents spilled across the foreground, its hues so potent they seem to have moved the very skies to grief.
The vivid colours of Maliha Azami Aga’s paintings belie a deeper undercurrent of turmoil
Winter of Discontent explores emotional, political and existential tension. The title, borrowed from Shakespeare’s Richard III, suggests a deep inner or collective unrest, a season not just of cold, but of upheaval, sorrow and hardship. The trees stand stripped bare, their stems painted in red, blue orange and yellow — devoid of leaves, they suggest desolation and endurance.
The Promised Land carries an immense symbolic weight. I find great spiritual relief in this work that seems to say that those who endure pain, hold fast to truth and walk the path of righteousness in this world are not forgotten. Their suffering is not in vain. For them, there is a promise — a realm beyond this one, full of ease, mercy and reward. The turquoise and white sky, and the snow-capped mountains at the back, evokes peace, purity and the surreal beauty of a dreamlike realm.
There is a profound tension between the fiery, blood-red sky and the vibrant, almost celebratory, rhythmic daubs in the foreground — all in stark contrast with the title Fallen Angels (My Children of Gaza). Rendered in acrylic on canvas, the work merges abstraction with emotional symbolism. The vivid, scattered dots of colour resemble floating souls, evoking the loss of innocent lives in Gaza. The sky mourns — a visceral cry against genocide — while the luminous dots in the foreground seem to illuminate a darkened world.
Jewel Series by Aga struck a familiar chord — its raw energy and layered colour fields reminded me of an exhibition title I once came across: ‘Colourful Chaos.’ According to the artist, the charged strokes reflect the complexities of her entangled thoughts and are what she “could grasp and what she could eliminate.”
‘Alternate Reality’ was on display at the Ejaz Art Gallery in Lahore from September 3-13, 2025
The writer is an art critic, fine artist and educationist based in Lahore.
She can be reached at ayeshamajeed2015@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025
Literally translated as ‘pick me up’ or ‘cheer me up’ from Italian, tiramisu done well is a delight. In fact, this transcendent, layered dessert of cake, coffee and cream is so popular that it is Italy’s most famous dessert export.
While some food historians speculate that tiramisu was created in Siena in the 17th century in honour of a visit by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’Medici, others believe tiramisu may have evolved from the Italian dessert zuppa inglese, a cake layered with jam and custard, inspired by the English trifle. Tiramisu could have also branched out from another dish: since 1938, a Vetturino restaurant in Pieris in the Fruili-Venezia Giulia region has served a semi-frozen dessert called tiremesù.
Le Beccherie, a restaurant in Treviso in the Veneto region, claims that their chef Roberto Linguanotto and the restaurant owner’s wife, Alba di Pillo, invented tiramisu in 1969, with the dessert first appearing on its menu in 1972. However, a recipe published for the dish appears a decade earlier, in 1959 in Tolmezzo, Udine, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. That recipe is attributed to Norma Pielli, who owned a restaurant popular with hikers and one of whom reportedly dubbed the dessert ‘tiramisu’.
Where tiramisu originated is fiercely disputed, with the regions of Tuscany, Piedmont, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Veneto all sparring for the honour. The Italian government, however, has officially declared tiramisu to originate in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, with the country’s agriculture ministry listing the dessert as part of the region’s agri-food products.
Tiramisu is a decadent combination of coffee, cream and cake
Tiramisu
This decadent dessert can be prepared a day or two ahead of time and stored in the fridge: just make sure to store the dessert in an airtight container or cover well with cling film. If you’d like to make the cake way ahead of time, then it is best to freeze it on the same day you bake it, in an airtight container. The cake will stay well for up to two weeks. Thaw in the fridge for a few hours before defrosting it at room temperature.
While the original recipe calls for mascarpone cream, it can easily be substituted by cream cheese. Feel free to use your own recipe for a sponge cake instead of the one given.
Ingredients
For the sponge cake
1 cup white flour
1¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
½ cup whole milk
2 eggs
¾ cup sugar
¾ teaspoon vanilla essence
For the filling
1 egg
1½ cups whole cream/malai
1½ cups mascarpone or cream cheese
2 tablespoons fine sugar
1 cup espresso or strong coffee
Topping
¼ cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons icing sugar
Method
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Make the sponge cake. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease an 8×8-inch baking tray (brush with melted butter and dust with flour).
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In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients — the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
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Add milk and butter to a sauce pan. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally until the butter has melted. Set aside.
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In a small separate bowl, whisk the eggs. Pour the whisked eggs into a large bowl. Add a little sugar at a time and constantly mix with an electric beater or by hand, until stiff peaks form.
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Add the vanilla essence and stir well. Add the butter-milk mixture, pouring a little in at a time. Then fold in the flour mixture. Mix well.
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Pour the cake batter in the baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes or until done.
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Make the filling while the cake is baking. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, cream cheese, malai and sugar together until light and fluffy.
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Brew a cup of strong coffee or espresso. For espresso, you will need to cook the coffee in a moka pot or espresso maker but strong coffee will do too. In a saucepan, pour one and a half cup of water and one tablespoon of ground coffee. Brew on medium heat until coffee is boiling.
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Take the cake out when it is done and let it cool. Cut the cake length wise into three layers.
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In a nice serving dish, place the first layer cut side up. Brush or spoon 1/3 cup of the coffee on the cake. Then, generously spoon out 2/5 of the cream filling mixture. Place another layer of the sponge cake on top and repeat.
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Brush the top layer with coffee and cover with a thin layer of the cream filling. Dust with cocoa powder and icing sugar.
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Chill in fridge for three to four hours or overnight for the layers to set. Cut into rectangular pieces. Serve with coffee or tea.
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025
Muzzumil Ruheel’s solo show ‘The Wild in Our Mouths’, at Canvas Gallery in Karachi, was an exploration of the relationship between thought, text, image, sound and space. As has been the nature of Ruheel’s trajectory, the presence of stillness or the unsaid becomes equally audible as, if not more than, the visual in his work.
The current body of work evoked a feeling of liberation, where form wove a joyful dance, flirting with the spectator’s gaze. Cast in welded steel and anchored in the Thuluth script, these calligraphed forms defied convention. They were placed beneath eye level or above reach, thus playing with vision. The emptiness of the white walls insisted on viewing space in relationship to the object. There seemed to be no difference between these walls and the empty white spaces or flat colour areas of Ruheel’s earlier paintings on canvas, wood or paper.
The explored dualities, simplifying the idea, with disregard to boundaries of material or consumer demand. The visual as text, text as image and space as form was the proposition to explore here. The conventional viewing of art is still so predominant within the Pakistani art market and commercial gallery dynamics. Ruheel’s simple gesture can be viewed as a mark of dissent and resistance.
Even so, it is a subtext within the main narrative. One must also keep in mind that here one is literally ‘reading’ the art in the context of the artist’s journey and the places his form has travelled from. Ruheel’s work demands that commitment from the viewer.
Form, text and the gallery space itself were in dialogue with one another at an exhibition in Karachi
There has been a disruption in the age-old script and connotations attached to Thuluth as a form of embellishment of religious manuscripts and architecture. It is a cursive Arabic script that emerged in the seventh century and flourished during the Ottoman Empire. Ruheel’s inscriptions are like sculptural drawings, whose movement and orientation is solely determined by the artist.
He is situated well outside the orbit of a past time, nor does he seem to be replicating it, as has been the tradition. The spontaneity with which he chooses to play with line, exaggerating a curve or extending a line, defines his personal journey and where he chooses to place himself socially and politically.
The work alludes to larger questions on the nature of personal, social and political boundaries, expressed through the form. Only an expert calligrapher or a palaeographer can truly gauge the diversions in Ruheel’s use of script. We recognise some letters due to the familiarity of reading and writing in Urdu and Arabic. We are well attuned to the rigour of mashq or practice that strives for perfection and can see that Ruheel adheres to the discipline of his early training in calligraphy required for a compelling flow of line.
How far he deviates is dependent on the viewer to recognise, but one thing is for sure: the artist is having fun with form through language, which defies containment and expectation. He, therefore, charts a direction that creates unfamiliar pathways of seeing and ‘reading’.
Ruheel instantly places tradition off the pedestal, making it approachable and ordinary. He injects his story within recycled imagery off the internet, shattering the myth of the original in art. The title or captions carry a parallel commentary that completes the work. The form of a horse was calligraphed, carrying the text, “Where are your Reins?” and in brackets the translation in Urdu and direct translation in English: “Tumhari lagam kahan — Where is your leash?”
Another work, Can’t Argue with Genius, which he translated as “Ji Aap Sahi Keh Rahey Hain — Of course You Always Know Best.” This tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and commentary, inserted in the captions to the work, conveys the loss in meaning in translation from Urdu to English, and vice versa. It brings home the realisation of a colonised mindset, where we constantly need to translate and clarify, as if this was addressed to an English-speaking audience.
Ruheel comes from a place of familiarity with Urdu literature, as he fondly refers to the wide range of his inspirations, from Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi to Ibne Insha’s famous Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab. This knowledge seeps into the nuances, punctuations and humour as he narrates, in his words, “this chapter.”
‘The Wild in Our Mouths’ was on display at the Canvas Gallery in
Karachi from September 16-25, 2025
The writer is an independent art critic, researcher and curator based in Karachi
Published in Dawn, EOS, October 26th, 2025
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