“These Indian girls are on the rise. Boys, it’s time to invest in them now,” user @edotsbean said in a TikTok post in November 2024. 

Social media’s latest phenomenon explores drastic change; the “Great Indian Shift” is a recent trend on social media, especially TikTok, where the internet is coming to a consensus that people of South Asian descent are beautiful or attractive-; seemingly “out of the blue.”

“I’ve definitely seen this happen, especially on TikTok…there are a lot of people that are not of that culture that are making it out to be something that it’s not,” Anushka Kalyan, a GBHS senior, said.

While acknowledging the beauty of an ethnic group may be beneficial to the way the world views that population, implying that South Asians are ‘all-of-a-sudden’ becoming attractive implies that they were never beautiful in the first place; this is something many Indians are finding to be offensive. Not only does it berate the ethnic group, it also shows the western media’s power to decide when a race can be beautiful or start trending.

“I don’t think we would see those guys in the comments tagging like 20 of their friends if [Indian girls subject to The Great Shift comments] didn’t adhere to the Western Beauty standards. I’m glad that ethnic people are being appreciated…but I’m not sure if that comes from a place of genuine appreciation or just fetishization,” Kalyan said.

Most of the videos “celebrating” South Asian beauty feature the stereotypically euro-centric, and possible fetishizing, view people have of Indians:; lucious black hair, dark eyes, large lips, small noses; and the list goes on. Seeing girls with ethnic nose shapes and bolder brows (both very common South Asian features) is harder to find,; and not every South Asian fits into the aesthetic or perceived image that the internet has reduced a whole culture to; it’s a very ethnically diverse area.

“I think that’s why they call it ‘The Great Shift’, because it’s something so extreme and to the point. Now they’re suddenly calling these women attractive, but earlier they would get so much hate and would be treated poorly, and hate towards them would be really normalized,” Shiven Batra, a senior at GBHS, said.

Another recent trend that amplifies the ramifications of the Great Shift is a viral street interview question that became popular a few months prior to the starting of this trend. A street interviewer would ask people what was deemed to be the least attractive race, and many of the responders would say “Indians” or “South Asian”.” They would then often follow up to their response by reciting common stereotypes most commonly stating that they are ‘smelly’ or ‘unhygienic’.

“There’s a lot of people who aren’t very aware of things, who are very shallow minded, and they say a lot of stereotypes about South Asian people I used to see them more frequently, but nowadays I see more people responding to those people, stitching videos and telling the other half of the story.I do think we’re going in the right direction. But I also do think that it’s not fully equal yet, because it’s still represented as ‘oh, those are Indians, and here’s the rest of the world,’” Vaani Tiwari, a sophomore at GBHS, said.

In South Asia itself, colorism and idolized Western beauty standards have existed for as long as the British colonized India in the mid-1800s. Similar trends have emerged before this “Great Shift.” Whether it be hair oiling ridiculed to be a key attribute to TikTok’s “Clean Girl,” gold jewelry’s transition from ghetto to popular, or yoga pants becoming commonplace,; microtrends such as these hint at objectification and discrimination that underlie seemingly flattering comments.

“There’s so many memes online of like Indian Street Food being disgusting, or Indian people smell bad. And while it’s not true for everybody, and although stereotypes sometimes do have grounds to it; for the most part it’s untrue and very objectifying,.” Shiven Batra, a senior at GBHS, said.

This is not the first time the internet has seen a shift in the general consensus on attraction by race through the “Great Shift” trend. Circa 2016, darker African-American men, or “darkskins”, were often deemed as unattractive. However, seemingly out-of-the-blue, people began recognizing African American men with deeper skin tones as attractive. 

The problem is that, instead of recognizing these men as beautiful, it led to a swing into appropriating their culture. Dreads, braids and cornrows began to start trending and became mainstream in the media, and suddenly all of the A-List celebrities had a “blaccent”. 

“I would say that as an Indian male with a voice, I would definitely find it appropriate to kind of speak out … sometimes it goes unnoticed when someone makes a joke or contributes to a stereotype so I’ve always called it out,” Batra said.