Bollywood stars often come under scrutiny for their eating habits and their diets are eagerly followed by millions, but sometimes being a prominent face on the internet can have some unwelcome backlash. Malaika Arora is the latest celeb to be trolled for such an issue when a video of her eating a South Indian thali with puris and an assortment of vegetables has become the target of many netizens.
In the clip, the actress is seen at Simply South, a restaurant in Hyderabad, with a thall loaded with fluffy puris and an array of bhajis and other dishes. She's seen barely dipping a spoon into one and tasting it before laying her spoon down again.
For the comment sections, this seemingly simple act sparked a wave of jokes with some saying that she’s acting like it was the first time she’d ever eaten food and others questioning why such an awkward moment was committed to video in the first place.
It also sparked the inevitable conversation about whether she was simply pretending to eat the food for the camera because she was watching her weight. “Idk whether to feel sad or laugh at her. She built her entire reputation on having a certain type of body, which has led to an inability to enjoy normal food without worrying about the calories.” said one Reddit user.
This incident has however opened up a different avenue of conversation and some users questioned why this should be a talking point in the first place. "Poori Garam hain, folks har cheez ko hum itna kyun exaggerate karte hain." (The poori is hot, why do you have to exaggerate everything so much?) said one user. Given the amount of social media content Bollywood celebs have to make to stay relevant, some others speculated that even though she was posing for the video, it doesn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t enjoying her food when the cameras were off.
Malaika Arora has often posted about her food adventures, whether it was eating Shahi Plov in Azerbaijan or a full-blown Parsi dinner at home with friends This video and the wealth of reactions it’s amassed has shone an interesting light on how celebrities live are social media fodder and how even one bite can be dissected infinitely.