The Thermometer Broke! Digital Purdah, Class, and Gender Transgressions on Pakistani TikTok

Abstract

Research on women’s social media practices in Muslim societies has primarily focused on middle-class or elite women, such as influencers, activists, and members of online communities. However, we know little about working-class women’s use of social media in Muslim contexts. Using ethnography and interviews, I analyze TikTok’s early popularity with working-class women in Pakistan and report three main findings. First, TikTok’s initial reception in Pakistan was fractured across class lines; whereas middle-class and elite women dismissed it, working-class women flocked to it, and TikTok became associated with a “low-class” femininity. Second, women engaged in a range of gender transgressions on TikTok. Third, women simultaneously crafted new practices of “digital purdah,” or veiling, on TikTok. I contribute to scholarship on digital purdah by, first, showing how women combine tools available on TikTok with other veiling strategies to conceal their identity while expressing their sexuality and second, arguing that “digital purdah” is compatible, rather than incongruous, with gender transgressions on TikTok. By showing how co-constituted class and gender dynamics shaped the simultaneous popularity and moral disapproval of TikTok in Pakistan, I argue for increased attention to class dynamics in studies of new social media platforms.

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