Goddess in the Mirror
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€108.99
A01=Tulasi Srinivas
Amman
Anthropology
Assam
Author_Tulasi Srinivas
Bangalore
Beauty
beauty pageant
Beauty Parlor
Bharatiya nari
caste-based society
Category=JBSF
Category=JBSL
Category=JHMC
citizenship
colorism
depilation
Draupadi myth
edge work
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fragility
Gender
Goddess
Hijra
imagination
India
Kamakhya Temple
Lakshmi
Memory
migrant beauticians
misrecognition
Mohini
Mother
Myth
olfactory presence
possession
Recognition
Religion
Savitri
Sita
skin lightening
story telling
Vishnu
Product details
- ISBN 9781478029304
- Weight: 572g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In The Goddess in the Mirror, Tulasi Srinivas offers a pathbreaking ethnography of contemporary Indian beauty parlors in Bangalore. Exploring the gendered world of beauty in the intimate spaces of the salon, whose popularity has exploded amid an urban tech revolution, Srinivas invites us to consider what beauty is and what it does. Visiting diverse salons that cater to various classes, castes, and queer sexualities, she tracks the relationships between clients and workers, revealing the beauty industry’s painful political, religious, and economic stakes. Embodiment, religion, and narrative intersect as clients and beauticians tell well-known stories of beautiful Hindu goddesses, heroines, queens, and apsaras, thereby weaving their own ethical subjectivities every day. Following the goddess’ allure, radiance, woundedness, fluidity, and fertility, Srinivas situates ideas of beauty within a larger moral and political context where beauty is both a fleeting pursuit and a rich resource for navigating a patriarchal present.
Tulasi Srinivas is Professor of Anthropology at Emerson College and author of The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder, also published by Duke University Press.
