Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture

Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture is the first volume to analyze the myriad conceptualizations of South Asian women’s body issues in film, literature, advertising, and other media. Showing how body image and self-identity are constructed in contemporary neoliberal India, the editors and contributors theorize issues of body image vis-à-vis Indian womanhood while touching upon political, socio-economic, and cultural parameters.

Influences from the colonial period through the age of the internet and globalization have reinforced Eurocentric ideals about femininity and womanhood. This long overdue volume addresses the pressures of beautification that Indian women face as they struggle with body acceptance and are often denied pride in their natural bodies.

Contributors: Annika Taneja, Anurima Chanda, Aratrika Bose, Kavita Daiya, Ketaki Chowkhani, Nishat Haider, Samrita Sinha, Shailendra Kumar Singh, Shubhra Ray, Sucharita Sarkar, Sukshma Vedere, Swatie, Tanupriya, Turni Chakrabarti, and the editors.

Srirupa Chatterjee is Associate Professor of English, Gender Studies, and Body Studies in the Department of Liberal Arts at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India. She is the editor of The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings and coeditor of Gendered Violence in Public Spaces: Women’s Narratives of Travel in Neoliberal India.

Shweta Rao Garg is an academic, poet, and artist based in Baltimore, MD. She is a former Associate Professor of English at DA-IICT in Gandhinagar, India. She is the coeditor of English Paradigm in India: Essays in Language, Literature and Culture.