Delivered by Intellect to: University of Alberta (albertacan) IP: 129.128.129.85 On: Mon, 04 Dec 2023 18:06:09 FFC 12 (1) pp. 67–82 Intellect Limited 2023 Film, Fashion & Consumption Volume 12 Number 1 www.intellectbooks.com 67 © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/ffc_00053_1 Received 29 November 2022; Accepted 2 March 2023 SONY JALARAJAN RAJ MacEwan University ADITH K. SURESH MacEwan University Bollywood self-fashioning: Indian popular culture and representations of girlhood in 1970s Indian cinema ABSTRACT This article investigates how Bollywood cinema represented girlhood experiences in India in the early 1970s. It argues that the films during this time focused on representing girls who displayed a variety of new fashion styles and attitudes, some of which were borrowed from western cultures. This was a sign that there was a new way of representing girls which broke with the submissive, dull and melan- cholic sari-wearing Indian female stereotype entrapped within domestic settings. The immediate result of this was the emergence of new style leaders and popular icons in Indian popular cinema. This study uses Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning and Guy Mankowski’s idea of self-design to examine how Indian girlhood was renegotiated in the 1970s as an individual-centric idea with more agency and power. Here, self-fashioning refers to the way girls adopt new elements of fashion, styles and attitudes to distinguish their identity from earlier arche- typal modes of representation in film and culture. It specifically analyses the emer- gence of Jaya Bhaduri in Guddi (1971) and Dimple Kapadia in Bobby (1973) as case studies to understand the transformation of girlhood representations in KEYWORDS Bollywood cinema gender roles fashion South Asia girlhood 1970s consumerism