The Goddess in the Mirror

“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

"[T]his is a valuable and nuanced book that will resonate with scholars of gender and labour, urban anthropology, South Asian studies, and anyone interested in how everyday practices become sites of political struggle. In terms of disciplinary impact, The Goddess in the Mirror may well become a touchstone for integrating aesthetic and affective dimensions into analyses of power." - Gunjan Shekhawat, LSE Review of Books