| Sumario: | Urbanization, the expansion of capitalist markets, and the rapid democratization of the political sphere have precipitated enormous shifts in Nepal's social organization, including how women from diverse caste and ethnic backgrounds participate in the newly monetized economy as laborers and consumers. Young working-class Nepali women have unprecedented access to disposable income. With their wages, they enjoy expanded purchasing power and, through consumption practices, craft their identity as modern commodity consumers. At the same time, as participants in the public sphere of wage labor, working-class women are deeply aware of the social risks they are taking as publicly visible women. These risks include being labeled "over-modern" and "open"—descriptors with undertones of sexual immorality. "Open" women are subject to gossip, ridicule, and other forms of gender-based social and sexual violence. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic research conducted with one group of young working-class women—female trekking guides—I contextualize my informants' experiences of wage earning and consumption. I explore the justifications my informants use to legitimate the pleasure they take in commodity consumption as well as the strategies they deploy to counter negative stereotypes associated with their status as public women. I end with a discussion of anxiety as a productive force in the lives of my informants and show how tensions between the pleasures of purchasing power and the perils of being labeled "over-modern" bracket their experiences of day-to-day living.
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