I scroll through TikTok, and there it is—another video captioned “The Great Indian Shift.” Yesterday, we were the punchline of “curry” jokes. Today, we’re trending. But as a Pakistani woman, I see through the façade. Demure, well-read, and beautiful—has the world turned into a rishta-wali phuppo, suddenly eager to place bets on our desirability?
Just months ago, TikTok was flooded with discourse about how Indians were undesirable. Western media has long framed South Asians as nerdy side characters, like Ravi Ross from Jessie or Devi from Never Have I Ever. Now, thanks to an algorithm-driven trend cycle, South Asian women are being hyper-fetishized. TikToker Muskan Sharma summed it up: “Getting treated like an object is one thing. Getting treated like cryptocurrency… the fetishizing epidemic has hit the Indian community.”
This fetishization reduces South Asian women to mere fantasies, reinforcing the notion that beauty is contingent upon Western validation rather than intrinsic self-worth
The Tradwife Aesthetic and the Eastern Ideal
The rise of the “tradwife” aesthetic—glorifying submissive, traditional femininity—intersects with The Great Indian Shift. South Asian (lumping together a diverse community of nationalities, cultures, and ethnicities) women, often stereotyped as loyal, family-oriented, and culturally rooted, are now held up as models of ideal womanhood.
Pakistanis know this reality well. We’re expected to be soft-spoken and obedient, and now Western dissatisfaction with modernity has led to a romanticization of Eastern values. But this admiration is another form of tokenization—reducing South Asian women to an aesthetic, not acknowledging our complexity or agency.
The Takeaway: TikTok Trends Aren’t Liberation
Representation matters, but not when dictated by an algorithm deciding which race is “in.” As a Pakistani woman, I don’t need TikTok’s approval to affirm my beauty, culture, or identity.
This trend follows a troubling pattern where different racial groups become fleeting fads in beauty standards. Previously, Black women were at the centre of such trends; now it’s our turn… who’s next?
The Great Indian Shift is a symptom of a world where racial identities are trends, not realities. Soon, TikTok will move on, and South Asians will be left with the reminder that, to the Western gaze, we were never seen as people—just a fleeting aesthetic. The real shift must come from within: rejecting the need for validation from platforms that commodify identity.
I Joined TikTok So You Don’t Have To: The Wild World of BrownTok
