Hymen interrupted: Negotiating body, markets, and consumerist modernity in India

Abstract

In this commentary, I contend that in a context marked by a slow but steady rise in sexual liberalism around the ideals of female sexuality and desire, the pressure to remain virginal is manifested through a potent nexus of markets and moral economies associated with gender and intimacy. Drawing on qualitative interviews with surgeons specialising in female genital aesthetic surgeries, particularly hymenoplasty, in New Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore, I show how restorative cosmetic surgeries on healthy bodies are proffered through the language of duty, autonomous choice, and the (neoliberal) market. Further, building on the sociological concepts of “moral consumption” and “progress through pleasure”, I show how consumerism­led modernity makes pleasure a ‘biopolitical burden’, and the cosmetic industry, a regulatory vehicle, disciplining female sexuality to conform with male honour codes. I question what this holds for the sexual and reproductive health politics of young people in India, in a context marked by pervasive asymmetries of socialisation, gender relations, and sexual experience. I conclude with a call to unsettle the social–moral ideals around female sexuality and to rethink the medical–legal frameworks around the cosmetic industry so that young people are not unwittingly co­opted into its production of ideal, patriarchal subjects.