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

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