A Fine Balance

Negotiating fashion and respectable femininity in middle-class Hyderabad, India

Bibliographic Data

ID3639701
AuthorsAmanda Gilbertson (0000-0003-4679-3416, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume48
Issue1
Pages120-158
Publication date2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x1300019x
OpenAlexW2127239515
LanguageEN
Citations received33
References cited26

Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork in suburban Hyderabad, this paper explores the double binds experienced by middle-class young women as they attempt to meet the competing demands of 'respectable' and 'fashionable' femininity. For middle-class women, respectability requires purposeful movement, demure posture and modest clothing when in public, as well as avoidance of lower-class spaces where men congregate. Status can, however, also be achieved through more revealing fashionable clothing and consumption in elite public spaces. Whilst respectability for some sections of the middle class necessitates avoidance of even platonic relationships with the opposite sex, upper middle-class informants encourage heterosociality and for some upper middle-class and elite youth pre-marital romance is a form of 'fashion' due to its location in high-status spaces of leisure and consumption. The tensions described in this paper reveal the fragmentation of Hyderabad's middle class and the barriers to social mobility experienced by women for whom the relationship between legitimate cultural capital and feminine modesty is becoming increasingly complex

Clothing · Consumption (sociology · Elite · Femininity · Middle class · Negotiation · Political science · Romance · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Psychology

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