DECODING 20 PROFILES ON SHAADI.COM

A RESEARCH PAPER FOR MEDIA STUDIES CLASS.

INTRODUCTION
Matrimonial ads in the Classifieds section of a newspaper generally read like this: “Alliance invited for tall, handsome, 5’10/26 yrs, Agarwal guy, well settled in New Delhi, earning in 6 figures. Only Agarwal girls may mail him at madhav23@hotmail.com.” You are allowed approximately 40 words and the payment is around Rs. 900. It is like marketing yourself in forty words to all readers of the Sunday Classifieds, especially the fathers of prospective brides/grooms who will spend their Sunday mornings in their pyjamas perusing the column for suitable matches.
Since the last decade, you can do the same thing for free (there are paid memberships also, which have more offers) and have the leisure of marketing yourself in 5 pages with a photo album to boot. The audience you reach now won’t be the anxious Bennett-like parent, but the prospective brides/grooms themselves who are internet savvy and willing to take the marriage process into their hands. There are parents/guardians/friends that create profiles for others and manage it for them, and do the indirect marketing of the future bride/groom. Most profiles though are created by the women and men themselves.
There are various online matrimonial sites in India. Shaadi.com, The World's Largest Matrimonial Service, founded in 1997 by Anupam Mittal CMD, claims to be the oldest and most successful matrimonial site. It caters to all Asians, and its objective is “to provide a superior matchmaking experience by expanding the opportunities available to meet potential life partners.”
The site is interactive and professional, with a vast array of communities: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Marwari, Oriya, Parsi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu. There is the Religion Matrimonial Site also comprising of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, Jewish and Catholic. Success stories keep flashing, with people thanking shaadi.com for having found their ‘soul mate’. How long this ‘soul mate’ business will last is another matter. The look of the site is fresh, using bright green, red as in ‘shaadi’ and a white background allowing the rest of the information to remain prominent.
The site is user-friendly with the tab ‘my shaadi’ helping one to access and edit one’s profile and ‘partner search’ to search for prospective partners. The search has the options of groom/bride, age, religion and country. There are other specific search options too, namely city search, keyword search, astro search, special cases, who is online, professional search and so on.
The profiles are detailed. There are categories such as ‘about myself’ which includes the basic information along with blood group, Manglik, special cases etc. Then there is the section of ‘Personality, Long-Term Goals, Partner Expectations, etc’, religious, social and cultural background, astrological details, education and career, lifestyle, location, hobbies, interests, family details and partner preference.
A non-member of shaadi.com can visit up to four profiles, and one has to sign in to visit further profiles. To gain access to more profiles and to understand the profile making process, I created my account in shaadi.com on 18/10/2008 in the afternoon.

THE INFORMANTS
The profiles I checked were men from the age group 23 to 27, from India, with the religious category ‘spiritual-not religious’, marital status as ‘never married’, and mother tongue and caste as ‘doesn’t matter’. I picked 20 profiles in that category, quite at random, sometimes going by the profile photo or lines like- “I’m looking for my dream girl” or “I want a good house wife”.
All the profiles carry photographs. 19 of the men have created the profiles themselves while 1 is created by a sibling.
Most of them are professionals, in the IT industry, law, medicine, software engineering, creative field, economics, engineering, fashion designing, real estate, defence, media, and one of them is not working and is looking for a ‘good house wife’. Most of the men are active and visit their profiles often.
The annual income bracket for all is between 2lakh rupees to 10lakh rupees and above. The only person who has a lower income is the one who is not working. Thus most of the informants belong to the middle class to upper middle class category.
Out of the 20 men, 4 are currently situated in Bangalore, 3 in New Delhi, 3 in Pune, 2 in Gaziabad, and 1 in Kanpur, Silvassa, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chennai and Amritsar. 19 of the men are from India, and there is one person from Iran, who is situated in Pune and looking for an Indian girl.

The mother tongue divisions are not as diverse. Hindi dominates, with 10, which is 50%, of them speaking it as their mother tongue. Three are Punjabis, and there is only 1 Tamil, Chattisgarhi, Persian, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali and one from the ‘others’ category.

The profiles once copied into a Word document run into 4 to 5 pages each, since the 20 profiles took up 75 pages. The category I chose has yielded men from middle to upper middle class backgrounds who are located in a metro and who are mostly north Indians.

ANALYSIS
I will not analyse the photographs, but look instead at just the verbal message and what it conveys. I’ll treat the profiles as advertisements, where the product is the profiler himself.

QUESTIONS
Partner Preference
The ads in the newspaper mention the profession, the pay, physical looks, education, family, caste and religion of the boy and make specific demands from the girls- be it caste, religion, profession and looks. Most matrimonial ads in newspapers want the girl to be slim, tall, fair and good looking, even if the boy might look like a demented gorilla. The Indian fixation with fair complexion is in performance in these matrimonial ads. Is the case the same in the profiles online?

Marketing portals
The ads in the newspapers don’t have the leisure to describe the men themselves, their interests, hobbies etc. What strategies then do the men use to market themselves and what are the ‘rewards’ they are offering? Are these ‘rewards’ convincing enough?

FINDINGS
Partner Preference
Four men haven’t mentioned their partner preference at all. Seven say that the complexion and body type (that is slim, average, athletic etc.) doesn’t matter, which makes a fairly large number. Two want a wheatish to very fair girl with slim, average or athletic build. Two just specify an average built, one wants a wheatish, fair of dark girl with average or athletic built, while only one 24 year old has mentioned a slim built specifically. It is interesting to note that this young man is from Bangalore describes his family as broadminded but doesn’t seem as broadminded when it comes to a partner preference. There are only two who categorically mention that they want their partner to be fair and the rest doesn’t matter. One of them is from Kanpur and the other from Jaipur. The 25 year old from Jaipur has mentioned in his “about myself section’ that “I’m here looking for a dream girl”. His dream girl has to fulfil only two criteria, she has to be fair and 162-170 centimetres tall. The rest of the categories don’t matter. He doesn’t seem very exacting, and he has a high probability of finding his dream girl. Another person has mentioned that he wants his partner to be fair or of wheat complexion. This very fair Punjabi is looking at complexion compatibility. One person who has mentioned that he is looking for a good house wife wants her only to be 167-180 centimetres tall, while the rest of the categories do not matter.

With a high 35% saying complexion and body type doesn’t matter, one can say that the profiles in the chosen category are not as fixated with the ‘fair’ girl as before.
It is interesting to note that not a single person wants a special case or an HIV positive partner and all categorically put a ‘no’ in that column. None of the men seem to specify a woman with a heavy built probably because none of them are heavily built themselves. Most of these men from the metros and small towns, who are internet savvy, seem to have got over the fair, slim complex, but have not got around to accepting a handicapped or HIV positive woman.
Most of the men are also open to women being well-educated, having any kind of post and don’t categorically mention any profession. In fact a few prefer working women, while most stick to the ‘caring, loving’ persona of women.

Marketing portals
The profiles read like any other in a social networking site, the only difference being that here the aim is not to network or keep in touch with friends, but to find prospective spouses. The categories of hobbies and interests which include hobbies, interests, favourite music, favourite reads, preferred movies, sports fitness activities, favourite cuisine and preferred dress style are similar to those in social networking sites. At first glance the filled up column seems impressive, but actually the members have not written it themselves but are choosing from an array of pre-given options. After knowing this, the lists become increasingly meaningless and even redundant since most include 7 to 10 choices in each category. Thus the ‘hobbies, interests and more’ category does not yield interesting information and is of hardly any use in analysing how the men market themselves. The most interesting category is the ‘about myself’ and in that, the one on ‘Personality, Long-Term Goals, Partner Expectations, etc’.
There are age old ways of selling grooms in India- through their financial status and educational/professional qualifications. These tactics die hard and are well marketed in these profiles. By quoting the annual income, the men are selling financial security. While most quotations seem realistic, and are between 2 to 5 lakhs per annum, a few need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Take the case of a 24 year old in the Advertising/ Marketing sector in Pune and earning 7 to 10 lakhs/ annum; or the 26 year old computer professional in Bangalore with an annual income of 10-15 lakhs. Thus the ‘rewards’ of financial security are not convincing all the time.
The educational qualifications play a big role in the profiles online too. 70% of the men have a bachelor’s degree while only 30% have a master’s. None have a doctorate. Yet most sell their educational qualifications while describing themselves. For example, the software engineer says he has a BTech from IIT Kanpur, the doctors don’t fail to acknowledge their hard-earned MBBS, the fashion designer is proud to be from NIFT Chandigarh and the lawyer shows off his years at the law faculty of Delhi University. While informing others about themselves, they seem to be screaming, “If you ‘buy’ me, you’ll move up the ladder socially. I am well placed, well educated; I have a fat salary, and by marrying me you’ll be the proud wife of an engineer/doctor/business man.” The profiles are thus selling upward social mobility.
At the same time, the men are selling their family, for often Indians look at the family background more than the boy himself. After all, in India, if you marry a man, you marry his family, especially his mother. Most describe their families as broadminded, liberal, supportive, open minded, tolerant, cultured, small and loving. They thus seem to emphasise on the nuclear family which is modern, and are thus selling their family’s modernity. Along with that, they also aim at showing their siblings and parents as educated and well placed thus further constructing the modernity notion. One profile put up by a sibling describes the family at length while not saying a single word about the young man himself. “Ours is a Hindi speaking, highly educated, service class family believing in truly secular & humanist values”. The family description further boasts of an inter-caste marriage with the parents being both readers in a college. The details even include the number of publications, and awards! The description of the families also seems to sell upward social mobility along with culture and modernity.
The young men sell their own modernity and progressive thinking and market it as a quality while describing themselves. They state that they don’t believe in, caste, religion, colour, superstitions, rituals, don’t except dowry and that they are liberal and broad minded. They seem to be saying: “If you marry me, you won’t be oppressed since I am open-minded. I’m progressive and not the traditional type. You’ll be happy with me.” The marketing of this intangible ‘reward’ of modernity and progressiveness is new to matrimonial ads. This type of constructing is not seen in the newspaper ads.
The men are also selling an emotional need by writing: I am a loving, passionate, caring and affectionate person. I want an intimate relationship. I want to share everything with my partner. We should be able to relate to each other. Along with companionship, they seem to be selling the gratification of sexual desires. The underlying statement is of emotional security and tries to also show that ‘caring’ needn’t only be a feminine trait. Men can be caring too. This is the marketing strategy of the new Indian man.
Selling one’s personality is also affective, and here the men do just that. They state that they are funny, optimistic, fun-loving, an A type personality, like a child (and thus need pampering), like travelling, creative, simple, have a good sense of humour and a positive attitude. By doing this, they seem to say that they are popular. It is surprising that that they don’t mention any typical masculine traits of physical strength, or protectiveness. They do seem to imply that they intelligent though. They are thus marketing their popularity and easy-going nature. Basically, they are selling a happier and better future to prospective brides who will marry them.
Do the men set one standard for themselves and demand another of their partner? To analyse this I chose to look at the lifestyle of the men, which includes drinking and smoking habits. It was surprising to see that those who smoked or drank did not mind if their partners indulged in it and filled the category with a ‘doesn’t matter’. None had a double standard. Those who said that they didn’t smoke or drink mentioned that they preferred their partners also don’t. There was only one person, who was open enough to say that though he didn’t indulge in smoking or drinking, he wouldn’t mind if his partner did.
Who are the addressees of these profiles? Clearly they are the internet-savvy, middle class, educated women who belong to the same category as the men: aged 23 to 27, from India, with the religious category ‘spiritual-not religious’, marital status as ‘never married’, and having any mother tongue and belonging to any caste.

CONCLUSION
The matrimonial profiles of the 20 men on shaadi.com show that though the importance accorded to educational qualifications and monetary status hasn’t changed, other categories such as ‘slim and fair girl’, the double standards, have taken a backseat. The men seem to be more open-minded and liberal, though often not stating what they mean by it. The rewards offered are mostly intangible ones, such as emotional need, modernity, upward social mobility, and tangible ones such as financial and familial security. The self-construction that these men make is pre-determined through the set categories of ‘about myself’, ‘about family’ and ‘partner preference’. Had these categories not been there, the profilers would not be conditioned and would probably paint a different picture. Would they then still continue selling their family values and achievements, their education and salary? This can be only answered when one has a matrimonial site styled that way. Till then, this is the present situation on India’s matrimonial front.


REFERENCES
http://www.shaadi.com/introduction/letter-from-cmd.php
http://www.shaadi.com/

SILENT SCREAM

The two screams clashed
exchanged swords.
Looking straight ahead,
Quiet, hollow-eyed.

The black and white gymnasts
Jumped, tumbled,
Got mixed up,
Till it became a deathless lull.

Escape, run-
The feet were rooted,
The chair was floored,
Thirty five prisoners.

The familiar, back to
The familiar.
A panting, an urge,
Wanting to get inside:
Inside, inside- outside.

The quiet eyes longed,
Hollow, behind the retina
The longing, the reaching,
Miles away.

23-10-2008