What is Sania Mirza famous for now? Is she famous for the quality of her tennis-playing? Or for the brand of drink she publicly declares her preference for? Or is she famous because of the way she looks and dresses? And how do these three kinds of ‘achievement’ relate to one another, in actuality and in popular perception? And what sort of shared values and attitudes determine these perceptions? And what effect, if any, could all this have on Mirza herself, and on the way she plays, earns money and projects herself publicly? Celebrity endorsement often has its own logic, which could say a few things about the society in which it is taking place. Mirza’s world ranking as a female singles tennis-player has dropped from 31 to 53, yet she is at the top, with Hrithik Roshan, among celebrities advertising food and drink on television.

Would this have been the case if she looked less fetching? And what if she were a man? When cricketers, for instance, go through a bad patch in their careers, and are even dropped from their team, they also find themselves left more-or-less high and dry by their corporate sponsors. What they drink, munch, wear, watch or wash clothes with become of proportionately less consequence to consumers. But that does not seem to be the case with Mirza at all. Her ‘meaning’ or ‘value’ as a public image depends on what she stands for, fatwa or no fatwa, in the collective eye rather than on how she does what she is actually meant to do — that is, play tennis. Hence, there is a curious dissociation of professional excellence from celebrity or fame. Her market value, to put it crudely, even if initially dependent on her sporting talents, has a momentum of its own now, and depends on another set of criteria, chiefly her appearance, and her significant difference from the way other women from her community look in India. The visual pleasure that she embodies is, therefore, not only gendered, but also socially and culturally weighted, and is exploited as such, by the market as well as the media.