The Goddess in the Mirror: An Anthropology of Beauty

by Tulasi Srinivas

Overview

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 readers 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’s 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478032779
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	11/04/2025
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

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 UniversityPress.

Table of Contents

A Note on Translation  ix
Acknowledgments  xi
Prelude: Reverie  xv
Introduction: Beauty, Myth, Recognition  1
1. Alluring  31
2. Radiant  63
3. Hot  94
Interlude: Nightmare  120
4. Wounded  124
5. Fortunate  151
6. Fluid  179
Conclusion: Mirrors and Masks: An Anthropology of Beauty  214
Postlude: Dream  225
Notes  228
References  241
Index  267

Editorial Reviews

Beautifully written and creatively argued, The Goddess in the Mirror presents an original perspective on beauty work that takes us beyond predictable and reductionist framings of the subject. Tulasi Srinivas’s moving ethnography innovatively tracks how Hindu myths and stories that customers and workers narrate offer paths to becoming.”—Purnima Mankekar, coauthor of, The Future of Futurity: Affective Capitalism and Potentiality in a Global City

“The work of beauty lends itself to philosophical speculation and to a sociology of neoliberal self-making. But the odor, press, shimmer, and grit of the bodies, relations, myths, and techniques assembling the contemporary life beautiful has seldom been as palpable as in Tulasi Srinivas’ The Goddess in the Mirror. A stunning ethnographic achievement that leads its reader through the challenge and complexity of gendered recognition via situations comic, luminous, and horrifying.”—Lawrence Cohen, author of, No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, and Other Modern Things

From the Publisher

The work of beauty lends itself to philosophical speculation and to a sociology of neoliberal self-making. But the odor, press, shimmer, and grit of the bodies, relations, myths, and techniques assembling the contemporary life beautiful has seldom been as palpable as in Tulasi Srinivas’ The Goddess in the Mirror. A stunning ethnographic achievement that leads its reader through the challenge and complexity of gendered recognition via situations comic, luminous, and horrifying.

No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, The Bad Family, and Other Modern Things - Lawrence Cohen

Beautifully written and creatively argued, The Goddess in the Mirror presents an original perspective on beauty work that takes us beyond predictable and reductionist framings of the subject. Tulasi Srinivas’s moving ethnography innovatively tracks how Hindu myths and stories that customers and workers narrate offer paths to becoming.

The Future of Futurity: Affective Capitalism and Potentiality in a Global City - Purnima Mankekar