Hot Indian Baddies Are Breaking the Internet
The world is crashing out over a viral video at a Tyla concert. Indian women would like a word.
When global pop sensation Tyla made her Mumbai debut last week, she was surprisingly not even the biggest news story. Instead, it was a viral video of “Indian baddies” — featuring models dancing to Tyla’s “PUSH 2 START” in their concert fits — that shocked the internet, racking up over 12.6 million views on one account alone. People have since reposted the video countless times. “I never knew India had baddies like this,” one viral comment read.
It turns out that Indian women being hot is, well, new information to some. This is especially confusing when Bollywood is known for its stunning actors, from Deepika Padukone and Aishwarya Rai to Priyanka Chopra, and Bipasha Basu — many of whom began as global beauty pageant winners. Yet, the myth of the “ugly” Indian has a far longer history that involves geopolitics and even Nixon. We spoke to some of the internet’s hottest people (including the newly celebrated Indian models), a shirtless Scottish influencer who claims he knew Indians were hot before everyone else, bandana girl, anthropologists, and more to make sense of the cognitive dissonance.