Article Text
PDF
Abstract
The emergence of new body technologies has led to the deconstruction of a cosmetically enhanced celebrity body into a bioinformational data-self, which becomes a surveilled subject quantified through biometric proximity. Evidently, the bodies of Indian Hindi film actresses evolve into material sites for the discursive encoding, bioinformational performativity and transference of disciplining hegemonic beauty ideals. In this age of information, the celebrity capital and postdigital positionality of celebrity bodies grant their bioinformational spectacular performance with a potential biologising affect for the further corporealisation of popular body aesthetics. Drawing on the maxims of new materialisms and neoliberal subjectivities, the article seeks to decipher the entanglement between the cultural economy of Indian Hindi film stars, their enhanced biometric dynamics and biologising spectacular performativity. Indian Hindi film industry, media, tabloids, magazines, celebrity culture and aesthetic clinics situate Indian Hindi film actresses under vigilant surveillance and simulcast their cosmetic consumption and technologically enhanced bodies across the visual-online attention economy. The present study, therefore exposes the enhanced bodies and biometric dynamics of Indian Hindi film actresses as the human and non-human agentic forms of industrialised cosmetic culture and neoliberal bioconsumerism.
- Ethics
- Gender studies
- Medical humanities
- aesthetic/plastic and reconstructive/cosmetic surgery
- cultural studies
Data availability statement
No data are available.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
- Ethics
- Gender studies
- Medical humanities
- aesthetic/plastic and reconstructive/cosmetic surgery
- cultural studies
Data availability statement
No data are available.
Footnotes
Collaborators NA.
Contributors CG is the first author and the guarantor of the submitted manuscript. The acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the cultural data reported in the original research article are claimed by her. IM is the second author of the submitted article who had initially conceived the idea of the study with respect to her interest in neoliberal subjectivities and cultural studies.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer-reviewed.
Author note CG is a research scholar in the School of Languages and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, UT of J&K, India. Her research interests include cultural studies with a specific focus on the biopolitics, posthumanism(s) and technology. Email: chakshugupta3899{at}gmail.com. Dr IM (PhD, University of Jammu, India, 2019) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Languages and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, UT of J&K, India. Her research interests include cultural studies with a specific focus on gender, neoliberalism and biopolitics. Email: isha.malhotra{at}smvdu.ac.in