Not Your Body, Not Your Choice.

Riya Pauly, SYBA

Not Your Body, Not Your Choice

Long before a woman speaks, her body has already been scrutinized, regulated and interpreted. From childhood, girls learn that their bodies will be evaluated for desirability, judged for morality and measured for their worth. Rather than being recognized as autonomous individuals, women are conditioned into understanding their bodies as sites of expectation shaped by marriageability, sexual desirability and social approval. In this sense, a woman’s body is not hers alone, it exists as a public object, open to commentary, correction and control.

This lack of bodily autonomy does not always appear blatantly. Instead, it operates subtly in the form of normalization, discipline and internalized surveillance. Women are rarely told outright that they do not own their bodies. Rather, autonomy is constantly negotiated, granted conditionally and revoked when women deviate from acceptable norms. At the heart of this conflict is the question of who owns women's bodies: the state, families, communities, religious organizations, or women themselves.

Women’s bodies are read as social texts long before women assert agency over them. Clothing is interpreted as moral character, body size as discipline or laziness, and skin tone as an indicator of class, caste and worth, especially in the Indian context. This social gaze is not passive observation but an active process of evaluation. Women learn not only to be seen, but to anticipate how they will be seen, adjusting themselves accordingly. 

For instance, it is visible in women’s everyday bodily habits. Many women instinctively place a hand over their chest while bending to prevent cleavage from showing, pull a dupatta or shawl closer when they sense male attention. Similarly, while tying shoelaces or fastening sandals, many women deliberately move to the edge of the road or a corner, not merely to avoid obstructing others, but to reduce exposure to male gazes and potential harassment. Such gestures reflect a constant calculation of safety, where even mundane acts require bodily self-regulation. The body learns to anticipate threat and discipline itself accordingly, revealing how control is enacted not only through explicit restriction but through everyday movement.

Beauty standards play a central role in this regulation. Although grooming routines, cosmetic practices and bodily “improvements” are often presented as personal choices, they function within social structures that reward conformity and punish deviation. These standards shift across cultures, but their goal remains consistent: to discipline women’s bodies. Though they are presented as self-care and confidence, such practices reflect a deeper human need for acceptance, validation and belonging. 

For instance, in India, fairness is still currency. Matrimonial ads ask for “fair brides.” Skin lightening products such as Fair and Lovely, despite recent rebranding, are still strongly linked with fairness, success and desirability. Even everyday practices such as using sunscreen reveals this bias. In many western contexts sunscreen is promoted primarily for skin protection, whereas, in India, it is often marketed as a means to prevent tanning. These products are examples as to how they promise social mobility, marriageability and dignity, highlighting how colourism operates through both exclusion and desire, further complicating women’s relationship with their bodies.  

Popular culture makes these dynamics visible. The web series Made in Heaven reveals one such instance of how Indian weddings become sites of bodily surveillance, particularly for women. In one episode, a dark-skinned bride is worried about her skin complexion and tells the wedding planners to brighten her facial colour in visuals, undergoes skin lightening treatments which also leads to an allergic reaction. She is also stopped from wearing a pink wedding dress because of her skin color. The insistence that she alter both her skin and her clothing reveals how beauty is about conforming to a narrow visual standard designed for public approval.

Today, surveillance also follows women online. Social media amplifies scrutiny, turning women’s bodies into content open to commentary, comparison and judgement. Filters that lighten skin or reshape features reinforce existing beauty hierarchies, while the comment section polices clothing, expression and sexuality. The digital world becomes another space where women anticipate how they will be seen, adjusting themselves accordingly. Surveillance is no longer confined to physical spaces, it is constant, archived and public. 

Women’s bodies also become sites of surveillance and blame in contexts of sexual violence. Questions such as “What was she wearing?” or “Why was she there at that time?” subtly shift the responsibility from perpetrators to victims, implying that violence is preventable through proper behavior, posture, dress or restraint. Clothing choices like sleeveless, off-shoulders, deep-neck or short dresses are frequently framed as invitations for male attention and normalizing and even justifying it through statements like “Ofcourse, men will look.” This framing disguises entitlement as inevitability and reduces invasive gaze to harmless behavior or a joke. 

Alongside clothing, women are instructed to regulate how they sit, walk, speak or even smile. Sitting a particular way, appearing friendly or smiling too much is labelled as inviting while restraint and seriousness are presented as necessary for safety. What makes this regulation particularly horrifying is that it is often reinforced even by women themselves, not as a genuine endorsement of objectification but as an internalized survival strategy. When harassment or violence occurs, deviations from this script are cited as contributing factors, responsibility is thus shifted from men’s actions to women’s self-regulation.

This control extends into sexual and reproductive rights where women’s bodily autonomy is heavily regulated by law, culture and religion. Marriage is often assumed to be permanent consent, rendering marital rape legally unrecognized. Refusal within marriage is frequently framed as betrayal, duty neglected, or moral failure. Desire itself is regulated who is allowed to want, when, and under what conditions. Women’s sexuality is expected to exist primarily in service of marital and reproductive roles, while pleasure and autonomy are marginalized or stigmatized.

This regulation is mirrored within healthcare systems, where women’s reproductive suffering is frequently dismissed. Conditions such as endometriosis are routinely trivialized by medical professionals, families, and society at large, with severe pain normalized as a natural part of womanhood. Such dismissal reflects the medical gaze, wherein women’s subjective bodily experiences are undermined by institutional knowledge, reinforcing the idea that women must endure pain silently as part of their reproductive role.

In India, this does not exist only in menstrual health but also in wider practices that commodify women’s bodies. Women’s sexuality itself becomes a site of commodification. In 2009, women participating in mass weddings under Mukhyamantri Kanyadaan Yojana in Madhya Pradesh were subjected to virginity tests by state officials reflecting how the state deploys surveillance over women’s intimate bodies under the guise of morality and social order. At the same time, the rise of hymenoplasty clinics in India marketed as virginity restoration, shows how patriarchal ideals of purity, chastity, and honor are reinforced through medical commodification. 

This logic of bodily commodification is further evident in commercial surrogacy, where women’s reproductive capacity becomes an economic resource. The child becomes the product of the arrangement while the woman's body becomes the means of production. (Nadimpally, 2015). Thousands of women, often from impoverished backgrounds “rented their wombs” to international couples. (Rozee et al.,2020). These examples reflect how women’s bodies, in India, are not only biological entities but also social and economic sites shaped, disciplined and commodified through medical authority, cultural norms, and state intervention.

Within this framework, abortion is rarely discussed in terms of women’s lived realities. Instead, debates are framed as conflicts between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” yet this binary hides a deeper imbalance in whose life is valued. So-called “pro-life” positions frequently prioritize the fetus while simultaneously trivializing the life of the mother. If life begins at conception, it does not mean life ends at birth. Yet care and concern by the same system often stop once the child is born, with little emphasis on access to healthcare, nutrition, education, or social support. This reveals that the issue is less about sustaining life and more about enforcing birth. 

In this sense, the ideology is more accurately described as “pro-birth” rather than pro-life wherein the fetal life is sanctified while the lived reality of existing life (the mother) is rendered secondary. This is evident in a 2025 case from Georgia, USA, where a pregnant woman declared brain-dead was kept on life support for weeks solely to sustain the fetus under strict anti-abortion laws, despite her family’s wishes. The case starkly illustrates how so-called pro-life frameworks prioritize fetal viability over a woman’s bodily autonomy, dignity, and moral personhood even after death.

The regulation of women’s bodies does not remain confined to institutions alone, it seeps into intimate relationships and even into self-perception. Over time, surveillance becomes internalized to such an extent that women begin to monitor themselves even in the absence of an external observer. This internal monitoring is not simply fear-based but deeply psychological. The anticipation of judgment produces self-doubt, body dissatisfaction, and chronic self-correction. A woman may enter a room and instinctively assess how she is being perceived before she assesses how she feels. Her posture adjusts, her clothing is re-evaluated, her tone softens or hardens depending on the imagined gaze. The body is no longer experienced as lived reality but as performance.

What makes this system particularly enduring is its intergenerational transmission, not merely through warnings about safety but through the shaping of aspiration itself. From a young age, girls are taught what kind of femininity will be rewarded. Praise is often attached to being “good,” “adjusting,” “presentable,” or “marriageable.” Advice about clothing, skin tone, weight, or demeanor is framed as preparation for future acceptance. While such guidance may emerge from care and lived experience, it subtly communicates that a woman’s security and value depend upon conformity.

In this process, women become both subjects and transmitters of discipline. Mothers, aunts, and older sisters do not simply enforce restriction, they pass down strategies believed to ensure dignity, stability, and social mobility. Respectability becomes a form of protection and a form of currency. Regulation is thus woven into affection, approval, and belonging. The norms governing women’s bodies survive not because they are always violently imposed, but because they are normalized through love, repetition, and cultural inheritance.

Ultimately, the denial of bodily autonomy does not always appear as outright force. It operates through normalization, moral policing, medical authority and social expectations that women gradually internalize. Control becomes most effective not when imposed externally, but when it is absorbed into habit and self-surveillance. As Michel Foucault argues, modern power operates not primarily through visible force but through discipline and internalized surveillance (Foucault, 1977). Women are taught to see themselves as objects to be managed, improved and monitored. 

The struggle for bodily autonomy, therefore, is not only about changing laws or resisting external control but also about reclaiming the right to live in one’s body without justification, fear or permission. It is about challenging the deeper assumption that women’s bodies exist for public evaluation, social honor and ideological battles. True bodily autonomy begins when women are recognized not as vessels of honor, desire or ideology but as complete individuals whose bodies are theirs alone. Until then, the politics surrounding women’s lives can be summarized in one unsettling truth: 

Not Your Body, Not Your Choice.

References:

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish

From Our Online Archive. (2012, May 15). Virginity tests at mass wedding. The New Indian Express. https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2009/Jul/13/virginity-tests-at-mass-wedding-67664.html

Halpert, M. (2025, June 17). Baby of brain-dead woman delivered in Georgia, woman’s mother says. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1jwl9l9yneo

Nadimpally,S. (2015). For motherhood and for market: Commercial surrogacy in India. In J.-D Rainhorn & S. El Boudamoussi (Eds.), New Cannibal Markets (pp.105-122). Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.editionsmsh.10753

Rozée, V., Unisa, S., & De La Rochebrochard, E. (2020). The social paradoxes of commercial surrogacy in developing countries: India before the new law of 2018. BMC Women S Health, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-020-01087-2