Discussion: ASSEMBLING THE INGREDIENTS OF CULINARY CELEBRITY: PADMA LAKSHMI AND THE MULTI-PLATFORM DIASPORIC IMAGINARY

This presentation will track culinary celebrity Padma Lakshmi’s evolving avatars across time and different nodes in a multi-platform transnational media ecosystem. Who is Padma Lakshmi? An “exotic” upper caste Indian American woman whose beauty predictably paved her journey towards global celebrity? A scrappy immigrant survivor of trauma whose life story serves as a testimony to the American dream’s accessibility? A popular feminist figure whose mediated food politics—leavened with inclusive nationalism—on a digital streaming platform upholds the causes of gender and race equity?