Drawing on the narratives of young lower-middle-class women employed in cafés, call centers, shopping malls, and offices in Delhi, India, in this paper I identify malleability or “plasticity” of the body as an important feature of contemporary service work. As neophyte service professionals, young women mold themselves to the middle-/upper-class milieu of their workplaces through clothes, makeup, and body language. Such body plasticity can be experienced as enabling: Identifying with the image of the “New Indian Woman,” young women enter the bourgeoning service economy. However, they also experience this body plasticity as threatening; bodily changes to meet the requirements of work can, at times, feel inauthentic as well as be read as promiscuous by others. I draw attention to how women appraise plastic bodies as both generative of change and a site of labor discipline, thus offering insights into the relationship among bodies, social inequalities, and contemporary service work.

在本文中，我借鉴印度德里咖啡馆、呼叫中心、购物中心和办公室工作的年轻中下阶层女性的叙述，将身体的可塑性或“可塑性”确定为当代服务工作的一个重要特征. 作为新手服务专业人士，年轻女性通过服装、化妆和肢体语言将自己塑造成工作场所的中上层阶级环境。这种身体可塑性可以被体验为促成：认同“新印度女性”的形象，年轻女性进入蓬勃发展的服务经济。然而，他们也将这种身体可塑性视为威胁。为满足工作要求而进行的身体变化有时会让人觉得不真实，并被他人解读为滥交。