In The Dirty Picture, which was a semi-biographical story of the controversial actor Silk Smitha, Vidya Balan played a small-town girl who comes to Chennai to try her luck in films. Her character, Silk, embraces her sexuality and does not hesitate to use it to get what she wants. Vidya said that she felt quite comfortable wearing skimpy outfits in The Dirty Picture, as she was not expected to have the ‘perfect body’. “You know, as a child, my mom had made me wear shorts and everyone teased me because I was really fat.
After that, I had never worn shorts in my life. And during the first costume trials, Niharika Singh gave me a pair of hot shorts/hot pants and I came out in that and I actually felt fully okay.” During the dance rehearsals, the choreographer kept asking Vidya to ‘thrust’ more, she said. “So I think slowly I was letting go of my inhibitions and maybe that’s why when I wore the shorts and walked out I was fine. Because there was no expectation of being perfect. I was not expected to have the perfect body in the shorts. Because Silk was big,” she said.
