Constructing Identity through Cultural and Ancient Interpretations of the Female Body

In societies undergoing modernity, how do women use consumption to negotiate the contrasting cultural values of tradition and modernity when their own bodies are held to be sacred (Agnew, 1997; Mukherjee, 1983; Wadley, 1977)? This paper explores the nuances surrounding consuming the female body in India through the material/spiritual dichotomy that manifests in the discourses of nationalistic modernity (Chatterjee, 1989). Women are defined and located through social and moral parameters which serve as prominent markers of control and surveillance over their consumption choices for ‘clothing’ their body. Through changes in family and household structures (Sardamoni, 1992), an increasing female workforce (Venkatesh and Swamy, 1994) and changes in media representations of women (Mankekar, 1999), women are encouraged to reconstruct their identity. Indian womanhood has been characterized as an ambivalent state, wherein women are both revered and subjugated, worshiped and molested, free to express themselves in different domains and yet voiceless. The Indian woman’s body then becomes the embodiment of Hindu religious texts, such as the Vedic and Dharmic literature, with the female body as a contrasting site of power and destruction, needing to be controlled.