Deepal Shah 18

Famous for hitching up her skirt in Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar "Hypocrisy had blinded Indians for a long time. But the youth are changing."

When Deepal Shah was all of eight, she saw the perfect O of delight on the face of Miss Universe Sushmita Sen. It became her personal talisman. When her name was not called out for the final 10 in the Miss India contest earlier this year, she had to pinch herself to believe she had not won. But she did not despair. Just like the preen teen she plays in the music video Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar, she metaphorically raised her skirt-and shirt-and got down to business. Two raunchy music videos later, for which she was paid a paltry Rs 10,000 each, the exotic-looking student of St Xavier's College, Mumbai, has become a starling. There's a lead role in a film under production, a reported Rs 1.5 lakh for every "live" show and an 80-year-old male fan in Nashik who wanted her to sign her name in Marathi.

She has got what she wanted. And it is that crazy little thing called fame.

It is a power trip that Sameera Reddy grew up internalising. As a pudgy 13-year-old she would watch, wide-eyed, as make-up artist Cory Walia transformed her eldest sister Meghana into the woman of admen's dreams on the terrace of their family home. That image sold an array of designer clothes. Reddy junior is just into selling herself. "My mother always told me, be humble beta. When I entered the industry with Maine Dil Tujhko Diya in 2002, I was brain-dead. I did not know anything. I had not even seen Sholay. I thought that was the way to enter, as a Miss Goody Two Shoes. But that was not me," she says, as she fixes a smouldering look for the camera with practised ease-a far cry from the Sydenham College graduate's initial desire to work in her father's pharmaceutical company.

Mallika Sherawat 20-something

Famous for statements custom-made for tabloid fodder "Despite my image, I live like a nun. I have clawed up on my nails to be here."

Which explains the makeovers. Cutting through a clutter where every newcomer has access to a stylist, acting classes come for a reasonable price and gym workouts are de rigueur, it is tough to stand out. Especially if you are the outsider looking in, with your nose forever pressed against the shop window. For a generation brought up on mega-malls, mega-television and indeed, mega-dreams, letting it all hang out is a great way of crashing through the glass. Shaped by increasingly explicit images over more than a decade of openness, little pumpkin pies are turning into tigresses draped in silken bedclothes, simpering virgins are becoming marauding sex machines. Starlets are encouraged to make "bold" statements and liaisons are alleged to heighten interest. A multiple 24-hour news channel environment is ready to snap up good-looking faces making heat-generating comments.

They have seen stardom happening to Bipasha Basu. Talk a lot, wear little. Call it the Jism model of button-popping success or even the Mallika school of marketing. When Mallika Sherawat made her debut as the mousy second lead in Jeena Sirf Mere Liye as Reema Lamba, she had to endure snide comments from the film's star Kareena Kapoor. She turned it into a weapon of mass distraction, inventing a small town persona to gain public sympathy, glossing over a marriage at 18, a subsequent divorce, and even an education at a prestigious Delhi college. She was the star of Khwaish, which made a profit of Rs 3 crore and then Murder, which made a profit of Rs 7 crore. Now she is at a stage where she says the "media would even like to know what colour panties I wear". Or indeed whether she wears them at all.

Rakhi Sawant 22

Famous for un-Jassi like secretary turn in Pardesiya "I feel I am a good actor. So what if I have to show my bare back in a shower?"

Clearly, the era where a heroine's modesty was outraged when she was kissed onscreen has well and truly ended. Madhuri Dixit once publicly regretted the kiss in Dayavan, saying she did not know one could say no to the director. Now actors say yes, but on their own terms. Neha Dhupia remembers being told to wear a swimsuit in her debut film Qayamat. "I asked the director whether I had to. When he said yes, I decided I might as well wear my own bikini. Hindi film swimsuits look so ugly otherwise," says Dhupia. The former Miss India says she had to steel herself for some of the love scenes in her second film, Julie, which has made a profit of Rs 5 crore, and still counting. "But my male co-actors were more nervous than I was," she says.

Is this missing modesty? Or mistaken modernity? Perhaps neither. The glam slam is exceedingly conservative under all this spit and polish, glitter and Swarovski. Engineering college student Shefali Jariwala, the Kaanta Laga girl, insists even now that the thong she wore was stitched on to her jeans. When she travels outside Mumbai for live shows, she never goes out unescorted. "My parents never leave me alone," she says. Rakhi Sawant, the tartan skirt-wearing secretary who metamorphoses into a tarted-up sex symbol in the remix Pardesiya, wears a burqa every time she walks down from her apartment to her Hyundai Accent. "It is because I wear very short skirts," she says pragmatically. Miss India Tanushree Dutta would rather not be reminded of her role in the steamy video Saiyan Dil Main Aana Re.

Neha Dhupia 23

Famous for turning lingerie into hot couture "I hope to work in films where I am not the only person with her clothes off."

Yet a globalisation of the mind is yet to take place. Parents who may delight in seeing their child swanning around in a swimsuit and competing for a Miss Universe may cringe when the child decides to do a bedroom scene. "We have to realise as a nation that though we make movies like Kal Ho Naa Ho, we also make a Chudail Ki Suhaag Raat. There is so much hypocrisy all around," says Shah. It affects her as well. "When I saw what I had to wear for the Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar video I was hesitant," she adds. But as Dhupia says, life is short and life in the film industry is even shorter. So why not?

In any case, the musical bodice-rippers have got used to being paid half of what the clothes in the videos cost. Jariwala's outfit for the Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar video (yes, there are two versions) cost Rs 20,000, says stylist Deepti Luthra (even that is a fraction of a music video budget of between Rs 10 and 12 lakh). Even Sherawat was reportedly paid just Rs 3 lakh for her role in Murder. But at no point do the women feel exploited or demeaned by Lolita-esque male fantasies. Their power lies in what their bodies can get them: in Sawant's case, it is a career out of forgettable Hindi and Marathi plays and a prospective dance academy. So if a director encourages her to reveal that she is wearing only underpants in a shower scene, it is a small price to pay. "Haan, mujhe bahut expose karaya (they made me reveal a lot). But it is okay," says Sawant.

Sameera Reddy 25

Famous for inventing the fake bake, a tan acquired without the sun "I have stopped going out in the evenings. I am always worried I will be misunderstood."

Almost all the sirens of this summer have "supportive" families. "My family deals with it," says Reddy, when asked about their reaction to her kiss with Anil Kapoor in the forthcoming Musafir. "They know it is play-acting," says Jariwala when reminded of the saucy bits in her videos. All of them have a career plan beyond a few films with full disclosure. This is something producers often discover too late. For instance, Priyanka Chopra left little to the imagination in her debut film Andaaz. No amount of cajoling or pleading by producer Sajid Nadiadwala would make her repeat the not-so-strategic exposure in Mujhse Shaadi Karogi. Her argument: that was then, this is now.

Shareen Mistri, the 23-year-old photographer-turned-music video director of Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar, says every girl she has worked with knows what she is getting into. "These are women who grew up wanting to be Miss India," she says. It is an aspiration being tapped into by everyone: from talent contests to the new Sony show, Hum 2 Hain Na, where two 13-year-olds want to grow up to be popstars. "All our research showed that becoming a movie star was the single biggest ambition of young girls," says Sunil Lulla, executive vice-president, Sony Entertainment Television. "It is not as if we are trying to spoil children."

Shefali Jariwala 22

Famous for making the thong a household word "My family knows whatever I do on stage or in videos is just play-acting."

This simmering sexuality makes the shockers of the 1990s, Pooja Bhatt and Pooja Bedi, sound like nursery children. What seemed dysfunctional then seems completely planned now. Mahesh Bhatt, who will remain the eternal agent provocateur, says there was horror when he directed his daughter in Sadak, where she played a prostitute. He would probably be praised for his outstanding courage now, much as Preeti Jain is the high priestess of new feminism.

Social norms have changed. So have women. They may still dream, like the late Nafisa Joseph, of marriage and motherhood some day, but the promise that life could be something more, which struck Reddy that sunlit afternoon on the terrace of her home, is a tantalising one. It is also perhaps a liberating one, worth the sniggers, the whispers, the rumours, the pressures. It may restrict their appearances-Dhupia prefers a book to a night out at a pub with eyes boring into her-but it also allows them a sense of private worth.