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Vimla Patil was associated with Femina, India’s number one women’s magazine, published by the Times of India Group for 29 years. Femina is Vimla Patil's personal success story. Today, FEMINA is one of the strongest international brands with a vast readership in India and abroad. She initiated the Miss India contest in the mid-sixties for the journal and brought it to its present international stature. Vimla Patil promoted Indian textiles and fashion garments – especially handlooms – for decades by presenting over 4000 fashion shows in India and most countries of the world. After finishing her long stint with Femina, she built a brand new career for herself as a freelance multi-mediaperson with writing, events, public relations, shows and many more activities in her portfolio! Vimla Patil will be delighted to answer readers' questions. Please click on the comments page link at the bottom of the article to post your questions for her or to comment on her article.

The procession of beauty queens marching into Bollywood films began with Miss Asia Zeenat Aman bagging the lead role in Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna. After this blockbuster, there was no stopping her. After her, came Tina Munim (now Ambani) who also joined the Dev Anand bandwagon with her debut in Des Pardes. After this all top film directors began to look at beauty queens and models to launch new faces in Bollywood. Vani Ganapathy did a short stint. Kalpana Iyer danced away in item songs. But the next big breakthrough came when Juhi Chawla, Miss India 1984 made Qayamat se Qayamat Tak with Aamir Khan. She was a star overnight after the success of the launch film.

Aishwarya Rai And Sushmita Sen Followed!

Exactly 10 years later – in between, other Miss Indias like Naveeda Mehdi and Dolly Minhas made minor forays into films – Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen, both international winners, laid claim to the top slots in Bollywood. Among the two, Aishwarya has certainly won the race of world fame with the recent news that she is the star of Provoked, a movie based on domestic violence – to be made by Jagmohan Mundhra. This film is based on the real life story of a British Asian woman who killed her husband when faced with unbearable violence. Aishwarya Rai, who has made an impact in international cinema, was Miss World 1994. She is the most successful beauty queen to reach the top rung of success in Bollywood.

Ash has appeared on every prestigious show in the US and Britain and participated in international film fests like Cannes on several occasions. She is also starring the crossover films made by Gurinder Chadha, Bobby Bedi, Jagmohan Mundhra and other producer/directors living in the West. Ash is in the news now also for the controversial tapes released by the media, in which she is allegedly heard talking with her ex-boyfriend Salman Khan. In the tape, Salman is allegedly extremely abusive and threatens her and her family with violence from the underworld dons – whom he claims to know – if she refuses to participate in a show abroad that is mounted by Abu Salem, the notorious underworld don. Aishwarya has been in the eye of a media storm because of the tapes of tapped conversations between her and ex-boyfriend Salman Khan, which are now in the possession of the police. The matter is in discussion in the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra State.

The other winner in 1994, Sushmita Sen carved out her own niche in the film world and though she is by no means the top heroine of Bollywood, she is a force to reckon with and has created a place for herself and holds an iconic status in the film industry. Extremely fond of diamonds, Sushmita often wears her gigantic solitares – 22 and 11 carats respectively – and proudly says that she has bought them because every woman must indulge herself and celebrate her womanhood. Then once again, came a procession of beauty queens who wanted to be stars. Lara Dutta, Bipasha Basu, Yukta Mookhey, Dia Mirza, Celina Jaitley and others staked a claim to stardom. Of these, only Bipasha Basu, who won the Look of the Years title, has been successful. The others are now on now off kind of stars who are happy to be on the pages of film magazines.

Bipasha Basu won the Face of the Year contest and changed the look of the Bollywood heroine by making her dark, sultry looks popular in sexy films.

Priyanka Chopra Is Superstar Beauty Queen

The next beauty queen to storm Bollywood is Priyanka Chopra. Now with her pairing with Shah Rukh Khan for the remake of Don and her female lead in the sequel to Koi Mil Gaya with Hrithik Roshan, she has the most prestigious projects in her bag and will soon be among the top three stars of Bollywood with Rani Mukherjee and Preity Zinta. Priyanka was lucky that her first films made her a box office draw and she had several back-to-back successes. Her sexy image and youth make sure that she has many years of power in Bollywood. Priyanka Chopra, a younger Miss World, is now poised to become a superstar with the best projects in her bag.

The fact that these beauty queens had no godfathers or filmi families to back them is to be noted while applauding their success. Preity Zinta started as a Pepsi commercial model with Aamir Khan years ago. She was given a small role in Dil Se by Mani Ratnam and shot to prominence instantly. Her films Kya Kehna and Soldier firmly established her in filmdom. Today, this model is one of the top stars of Bollywood. Bipasha Basu, Malaika Arora Khan, Amrita Arora, Lara Dutta, Yana Gupta and Katrina Kaif are other models that are working successfully in Bollywood. Of them, Bipasha, the girlfriend of John Abraham, is the second most popular star after of course, Preity Zinta, who is among the top five Bollywood actresses today.

Preity Zinta

Male Beauty Kings Too Have Made It To The Top

If women can do it, why can’t men? So male personality contest winners have also entered Bollywood and modeling in a big way. The two shining examples are Dino Morea and the to-be superstar John Abraham. John is now poised to star in some of the biggest productions of Bollywood and is tipped to reach the top in the near future. Arjun Rampal, Milind Soman, Samir Dharmadhikari Bikram Saluja and several other Mr. Indias, Models of the Year and television actors have made inroads into Bollywood in their own way and continue to act in films at various levels.

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