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Gender, Class Aspirations, and Emerging Fields of Body Work in Urban India

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Abstract

If some research indicates that bodies are becoming central to the life projects of “new liberal Indian” women, public debates simultaneously reveal that their bodies are entangled in satisfying traditional and modern ideals of womanhood. There are few studies, though, that have looked into how women reconcile and make use of contradictory cultural signals surrounding their bodies that arise out of a rapidly changing gender and class structure. We draw upon both followers and critics of Bourdieu to show that bodily concerns and undertakings of 48 urban Indian women, and the ways in which they resist and embrace cultural demands on their bodies, vary by social class locations. The women in the study who were most keenly aware of “options” embedded in thin or fit bodies were the ones who could take advantage of new careers and styles of living that the global economy was bringing to their doorsteps. In contrast, women who saw limited prospects for social mobility were unconvinced of the symbolic value of a thin body and rejected appearance concerns on the ground that it interfered with their mothering responsibilities. We conclude that while the fit body has indeed emerged as an important site of self-making for the modern Indian woman, the degree to which she sees costs and benefits involved in the bodywork of losing weight depends on her class location.

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Notes

  1. In 1996, when it was India’s turn to host the Miss World beauty pageant, feminists, Hindu right-wingers and nationalists came together to vehemently protest the event. The “swimsuit section,” a standard feature of beauty pageants, was at the center of the controversy and the protestors, in spite of their very different political ambitions, were united in the claim that beauty pageants sully the sanctity of the Indian woman’s body. After an intense legal fight that consumed the nation’s attention, the organizers were able to host the event but, in order to avoid trouble, relocated the swimsuit section of the competition to an island in the Indian Ocean.

  2. The conversion rate is based on the rate at the time of the study in 2005 [$1= Rs. 40 (value rounded)].

  3. We would like to thank one of our reviewers for pointing out that the sari (with its exposed mid-riff) can be quite exposing. Because the sari is considered to be an authentically Indian, respectable garb, its implications for female propriety are quite different, however. Towards the end of the colonial period when Indian women were slowly moving into the public sphere, a petticoat and a blouse were added to the sari to cover the chest and the mid-riff and make it more “respectable.” A sari, therefore, can ideally cover the body and hide fat in a way that other garments cannot, although popular media frequently make exceptions, as do women exercising stylistic liberties, in how to wear the sari.

  4. Eve-teasing, although an English word, is popularly used to describe the obscenities or harassments that women often encounter in public spaces. It is more similar to catcalling than hazing in that it rarely involves direct physical contact.

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2010 American Sociological Association’s annual meeting held in Atlanta, Georgia as part of the Sociology of Body Session. This research was funded by the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati. The authors are very grateful to David Smilde and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. The authors would also like to thank the women who took time out of their busy lives to talk to us and contribute to research on bodywork.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Loyola University New Orleans, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA

    Jaita Talukdar

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Cincinnati, 1018 Crosley Tower, Cincinnati, OH, 45221, USA

    Annulla Linders

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Talukdar, J., Linders, A. Gender, Class Aspirations, and Emerging Fields of Body Work in Urban India. Qual Sociol 36, 101–123 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-012-9240-6

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