A fine balance: Negotiating fashion and respectable femininity in middle-class Hyderabad, India

Abstract

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 inform..