Growing up, I’d always ask my mum why Falguni Pathak dressed like a guy. I don’t remember her response, but I imagine it was something to the effect of: “It’s just Bollywood trying to sell more pantsuits…” To become synonymous with an entire festival is a level of success matched only by Mariah Carey in the months leading up to Christmas. Or Amitabh Bachchan for Holi.
There’s been enough discourse around how Pathak has demolished gender stereotypes throughout her career. In the music video for her 2003 hit ‘Saawan Mein’, she sports more drip in a sky-blue windbreaker than the Gallagher brothers combined. Yes, her music and videos have been queer-coded long before India learned to see queerness in common folk. But there’s another less-debated issue that stems from the clean-shaven men who appeared in Pathak’s music videos: should a man rock a beard?
Pathak’s brand of Hindi pop music comprises upbeat ballads with gorgeous people and sweet storylines. ‘Maine Payal Hai Chhankai’ captures love blooming during preparations for a college fest; ‘Sawan Mein’ is set against the backdrop of a group of girls and boys going head to head at various sports (and the lead couple eventually falling in love); in ‘Chudi’, a torn baby blue dupatta becomes the vehicle for love. Watching these videos in 2025 is whiplash-inducing: everybody has their own sense of style: tube tops, varsity jackets, gelled hair, neat spikes, tiger-print bandannas, bubblegum pink and grasshopper green hair beads. But also: men like Indraneil Sengupta, a baby-faced Shahid Kapoor, Vivan Bhathena, Iqbal Khan and Santino Morea with dripping-wet hair, doe eyes and a conspicuous lack of facial hair. In the video for ‘Ye Kisne Jadu Kiya’, a bulky, Superman-like dude playing a college professor wears a shirt and a solemn tie. He is still clean-shaven.
Compare this to the spate of beards we see in popular media now: Virat Kohli and half the men’s Indian cricket team, Toxic (2026), Dhuradhar (2025), Animal (2023), Pushpa: The Rise (2021) and Kabir Singh (2019). Through these depictions, facial hair becomes more than just a grooming choice; it becomes shorthand for hyper-masculinity—a way for men to project dominance, authority and control. In a culture still tethered to patriarchal ideals, facial hair is marketed as proof of real manhood. And women, of course, are expected to be fascinated with men who assert superiority.
How do women feel about this? Dishna Sikidar is a fan of the clean-shaven look. “Pathak’s men were images of urbanised youth and economic liberalisation, as opposed to the angry young men of the ’70s and ’80s.” Her men were also very Western-looking, I point out. “Hugh Grant-esque, yes. With the floppy hair and middle parting going on,” she sighs. They look like they smell of flowery aftershave. Their jawlines cut through the screen.
In Pathak’s video for ‘Chudi’, which also stars Riya Sen, Kiran Janjani wears a denim jacket and casually arranges its folds in the middle of a road. This simple action had women swooning. “My ex, who was insecure about his jawline, grew a beard even though he looked much better without it,” laments Astha, a corporate lawyer. “Men loved to experiment with their facial hair in the early 2000s. Look at pornstaches; look at Brad Pitt’s goatee. They’re so lazy these days; they just grow a full beard and call it a day.”
Abhijit Vadavalli, an investment analyst and competitive racing driver—also a bearded man—agrees. He doesn’t shave often because he’s too lazy. “Even though my skin feels great after and I look so much younger, beards are considered classy these days.”
When I was a child, I’d wait for Falguni Pathak’s songs to appear on television, watching them with my older cousins, who wore sequins and pink, khaki and turquoise, and purchased postcards with Jimmy Shergill and Hrithik Roshan, John Abraham and Arjun Rampal on them. The money was borrowed in the name of candy. We debated whether any of us should get Pathak’s haircut, tried to guess how old the actors in her music videos were and wondered whether we’d have even a smidge of their swag when we got to that age. Just like the painting featuring Trisha Krishnan in ‘Meri Chunar Udd Udd Jaye’, which comes alive and dances with Ayesha Takia before going back to its inanimate splendour, for five minutes every morning, I shave and realise I’m actually older than Pathak’s men. I may never quite look like them. As Tehmina Fatima, a law student, puts it, “When men shave, they look less macho and more human.” I hope more of us can be more human. And there’s a simple, five-minute trick to do that.
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