Being Bollywood

Through engaging media coverage of the public lives of Bollywood actresses, this book unveils understandings of idealized femininity and gender within this cultural context. Beyond its own borders, such a context is unique given the global relevance of content from and about Bollywood with members of the diaspora as well as those culturally Indian individuals that are no longer part of the diaspora. This book thus engages these actresses as global Indian celebrities who are framed and presented as contemporary urban Indian exemplars of gender via media coverage about them. The book therefore offers a robust and detailed case study of the Bollywood star system so as to demonstrate how the nuances of this unique cultural context influence the dimensions of postfeminism and celebrity culture therein. Viraj Suparsad is a post-doctoral fellow in African Feminist Imagination at The Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, South Africa. He holds a PhD in Media Studies from The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His published works look at issues relating to postcolonial femininities as they emerge in popular culture spaces in the global south.