Candanbālā's hair: Fasting, beauty, and the materialization of Jain wives

Jain discourse on the body provides us with an opportunity to examine complex choreographies of ritual acts, which materialize the Jain body. The incipient moment of moving into womanhood is a key place for the materialization of wifely bodies. In order to understand this materialization, we must consider the ways in which discourses (here of wife-hood and nun-hood) shape the transition of Jain young women's bodies into the expected bodies (wives). The acceptance of the performative nature of the body among Jains allows us to examine the ways that Jain young women negotiate the seemingly contradictory discourses of wife-hood and nun-hood into bodies constitutive of both. Body practices suggest ways to explore the intersection of competing discourses and to destabilize the boundaries between them. In the Candanbālā Fast, Jain ritualized hair practices manifest the bodies (shaved nun and the luxurious long-haired bride) more overtly and the focus on the reiteration of the presence and discourse of loose, lovely hair enables these young women to negotiate the terrain of these seeming poles while maintaining the stated virtue of the celibate nun and the promise of the sexual and fertile wife.