The rise of Thirst Trap culture among Gen Z Indian women – ETtech.com

This practice of picture-posting is referred to as sharing thirst traps. The Cambridge dictionary defines thirst trap as a statement by or photograph of someone on social media intended to attract attention, or to make people who see it sexually interested in them.

Thirst-trapping is a pronounced culture in the US, popularised by influencers like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner over the last couple of years. At least 150-200 thirst trap tweets are posted every hour on Twitter on a daily basis and more than half of these are from the US, as per analytics portal Hashtagify. The practice is age-agnostic, with celebrities in their 60s, like Madonna, making headlines for posting thirst traps on Instagram earlier this week.

Thirst trap culture has gained traction in India recently. Google Trends India suggests the interest for the term has peaked thrice in the last six months, indicating its growing influence among Indian social media users. The last spike was seen in May 2020.

These Gen Z women are part of over 470 million people in the country as per Bloomberg analysis born roughly between the year 1996 and 2010. They were born alongside the birth of the internet. Growing up, theyve had their accounts on every social media platform from Facebook to Instagram. And their internet habits are very different from their predecessors, the millennials.

According to Facebooks advertising vertical, Facebook.com/Ads, over 4 million women Instagrammers from India in the 18-24 age group show interest in human sexuality as a topic, as opposed to 2.7 million in the 25-31 cohort.

Theyre fluid about their identity online, notes Ishtaarth Dalmia, an anthropologist and AVP at digital agency Dentsu Webchutney. Most of these womens social media bios don't reflect their names but have emoticons or random words instead. They are quick to open and shut social accounts. They have private Instagram accounts dedicated to posting thirst traps that have several thousand in followers.

Seeking Validation

Thirst trapping is also a shortcut to getting validation, an important marker of identity formation for Gen Z.

This generation feels so overwhelmed by its inability to control everything thats going on in the world that fetching likes and shares brings in a sense of control to them. Its something they can rely on, says Dalmia.

Influencers like the Kardashians glorify this idea as well. They are indirectly sending this message that posting provocative content can make you the next youngest millionaire, says Sascha Kirpalani, a Mumbai-based psychologist.

However, the motivation behind posting thirst traps is a lot deeper, she quickly adds. It is a means to self-expression for a lot of women in this generation, a form of feminism, of reclaiming power over their own body.

To some, like Pooja Mishra from Mumbai, it implies breaking away from the repression theyve seen the previous generations of women go through.

I dont mind sharing thirst traps. Its a part of me, not my entire personality. That's my face and body I walk around with 24x7. I shouldn't have to hide it in the online world because of the threat of someone being creepy, says the Gen Z chartered accountant.

Even its predecessors note that this cohort is far more vocal about its sexuality and love for erotica, both in words and visuals, than they are. What you see them post online is actually a manifestation of what we used to write in our diaries, says Shreemi Verma, a Mumbai-based content creator in her late 20s.

A lot of these women post thirst pictures via their alt-accounts (alternate accounts). Perhaps thats why they find it to be a safer space as it doesnt come with judgement from peers or family, Verma reckons.

Changing Perceptions

Gen Z women are now having an outsized influence on the way women, in general, express their sexuality online.

Before Gen Z Twitter became popular, hardly anyone spoke of erotica. People labelled it as explicit content, notes Srishti Millicent, a digital marketer based in Chandigarh.

Now these 18-23-year-olds put thirst traps and they go viral, she adds.

By the way, Millicent is only 25. But she too feels it's the "younger" girls who make her feel more comfortable about posting thirst traps online now.

On Twitter, thirst traps start with one person from this Gen Z community tweeting and urging others to post their pictures, notes Kejal Shah, a 27-year-old HR professional from Mumbai. Thats how it starts trending. You dont feel awkward doing it because everyone else is getting on board as well.

Shah herself has posted an occasional thirst trap on her social media accounts in recent times.

Pune-based Ira, a 24-year-old radio jockey, sees this trend as part of an attempt where Women make online spaces safer for women.

Ira shares a story of a fellow Gen Z woman who was recently harassed by a man about one of her pictures online. She traced him to his Facebook account which led her to the guys mothers profile. She then confronted him with screenshots of his inappropriate messages, asking if she should show his mother what her son is up to. The guy was profusely apologetic.

Across social media platforms, these women have now created a sorority of their own.

Every Gen Z woman in India, who is comfortable posting thirst traps online, is likely to follow several others like her. Inside this tiny community, people hype each other as enthusiastically as they cancel a member who isnt genuine, says Ira.

They operate under pseudonymous accounts, but a look at the list of people they follow gives an insight into their minds. It has artists, poets, activists, fake news and misinformation fighters. Satire and irony are dominating themes of their content.

For advertisers targetting Gen Z, this segment is still an enigma theyre trying to decrypt, notes Dentsu Webchutney anthropologist Dalmia.

Some of them also post pictures of celebrities they are thirsting for. Others highlight the problematic nature of 365 Days, a Polish erotica movie streaming on Netflix that has been trending on the platform in India for weeks now arguing that it glorifies molestation and abduction.

Many have developed a thick skin when it comes to receiving unwarranted comments from men on their posts. However, some question if these lot are indeed being anti-feminist since they eventually end up catering to a male fantasy of women.

Many thirst trappers end up deleting their pictures after uploading them, fearing negative attention. Some of them also worry they may attach their self-esteem to the number of likes they get on these pictures for good.

They say thirst traps are part of the larger realm of body-positivity content. But they also know that while every thirst trap is body-positive, not all body-positive posts are thirst traps.

On social media, however, all are happily welcome to co-exist.

(Illustration and graphics by Rahul Awasthi)

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The rise of Thirst Trap culture among Gen Z Indian women - ETtech.com