The Multiple Bodies of the Bride: Ritualising 'World Class′ at Elite Weddings in Urban India

In: Paragrana, Band 18, Heft 1, S. 267-283

Abstract

Abstract
This paper examines the gap between the wedding and the beauty or fitness industries, underlining how closely they are connected by means of 'marketing the body′ and how much pressure is put on aspiring candidates in terms of their performance. The beautiful and the fit body of women as well as men have moved centre-stage in the feel-good ideology promoted in neoliberal urban India. The wedding ritual is a field of discourse through which a host of media and gender concepts are entangled in an ambivalent way: at once empowering and domesticating.