ABSTRACT
Print matrimonial advertisements are a convenient and easy way of searching for a prospective bride/groom. However, the language of the matrimonial, especially the words used for brides, becomes relevant for understanding the way in which brides are represented and projected in the Indian marriage ‘market’. The chapter discusses this, its dialogic and intertextual nature and how it commodifies women, demanding and projecting their physical attributes. This is supported by the large percentages of words that denote physicality for women such as beautiful, pretty, tall, fair and slim, and it has implications for bridal discourses and their ideologies, for it shows the systematic redefining of women, according to which they are judged and selected. It is important to ask whose desire is being projected in the advertisements: the bride’s, groom’s, their families’ or society’s, underscoring that the matrimonial is not an innocent advertisement and that much happens through them, ideologically and socially.
