While 'Gramming' a wedding in India: Media and the reproduction of a 'bridal femininity'

Abstract

This paper examines the changing wedding scenes and performance of bridehood in India in a post-liberalisation period. The study, based on a digital ethnography, explores the changing wedding practices by considering the role of digital media in circulating and reifying the image of an emergent bridehood, tethering it to the ideology of consumption as well as distinctions based on social categories like gender and religion. It looks into the possibility of a scheme that goes beyond the narrative of 'uniformisation' in explaining the changes manifested in the performance of bridehood in the Eastern and Western regions of India, with an expansion of social media practices in the recent years.