The aunty appeal: How young Indians see and engage with the figure

Why do Indian men desire aunties, while Indian women dread becoming them?

If you google the word ‘aunty’ without the addition of any other keywords, what pops up is a slew of dirty videos. Delve a little deeper into Google trends, and it is evident that globally, the aunty figure has always been portrayed as one of excess–fashion, intrusive behaviour, and sexual experience. While there is a rampant fetishising of the older female figure with terms like MILF and cougar worldwide, with pages even on Psychology Today, the label of ‘aunty’ in the Indian context is a lot more contradictory and complicated.

Aunty Lovers United

For Rohith, a 26-year-old PR professional who requested to stay anonymous, aunties were the first set of women he saw up close and personal. “Growing up, during the initial phases of puberty, aunties were the only women other than my mother that I saw. While there were celebrities or peers I was attracted to, aunties and their real bodies were the ones I closely encountered, and it felt acceptable to fantasise about them since a lot of them weren’t even related to me.”

In a largely patriarchal society, such as India, where spaces are segregated on the basis of gender and the mother figure is exalted to the level of being worshipped, aunties are accessible and seemingly acceptable figures to be desired. According to Kareem Khubchandani, a professor and researcher in the field of queer studies and South Asian studies, “In the West, there is the trope of MILF porn. However, in a cultural system that valorises the mother along with the political systems that work to protect the mother, and that considers the mother as a goddess and equates her to the nation, the aunty becomes a safer figure to desire.”

Khubhchandani, who, in fact, wrote a book on Aunty Studies, also referred to his paper Between aunties: Sexual futures and queer South Asian aunty porn. This sexualisation of the aunty is reflected in the staggering popularity of ‘aunty porn’ that has ruled cyberspace in many formats. From Bollywood characters like Mrs. Sharma in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai to popular erotic cartoon characters including  Velamma and Savita Bhabhi, they have been rampant objects of young male attention.

According to Sreedhar Mini and Baishya’s paper on the topic, for youngsters at the cusp of their sexual awakening, the aunty is a character that enters with a sense of impropriety and exudes a wealth of experience owing to her age. This idea of the ‘sexy aunty figure’ is something that has popularised aunty porn, overtly sexualising, and creating an archetype of, this figure.

Pages like ‘Hot Aunty Lover’ on YouTube average 145,000 views regularly, featuring content created by Indian women on varying online platforms. What has to be noted is that these pages are curated (usually without the creator’s consent) simply in keeping with the collective idea of what a ‘sexy aunty’ is supposed to be, and fetishises the aunty figure, casting her as a sexually experienced and frustrated woman to the point of dehumanising her.  

From Didi to Aunty

While the aunty figure is an appealing one for most cishet Indian men, most Indian women dread becoming the figure. In Anmol Nayak’s piece for Feminism in India, she talked about how “young women, especially unmarried ones, either do not want to associate with the term or are expected to steer clear of it.” While the idea of sexual experience is what ‘the aunty figure' inspires in men, it stirs misogynistic notions of otherness, excess, and undesirability in most women. As Nayak continues in herpiece, “In this imagination, the woman, whom the world now addresses as ‘Aunty’, has basically served her purpose of marriage and childbearing, and is hence rendered useless.”

When delving further into the young woman’s fear of turning into ‘an aunty’, Khubhchandani says, “In the neoliberal aesthetic, the aunty figure is not someone who fits into the typical ideals of beauty–skinny, fair, well-groomed or young. The visual and moral idea that people commonly have associated with the idea of the aunty as disciplinary, intrusive or wicked, is also a common notion that makes it an unappealing archetype, one that young women don’t want to embody.” This is further supported by several articles online on popular platforms such as Buzzfeed toThe Print that generalises aunties as figures of impropriety and those who perpetuate outdated norms and values.

Aunties of Acceptance

With varying lenses to look at the aunty figure, it is imperative to relinquish the agency and autonomy to define who an aunty is, back to them. The deeply rooted notion of how aunties are improper can also be looked at from the other end of the spectrum that these are also women who are empowered in their ways. Khubhchandani adds, “The aunty, as someone at the periphery of the family, is an individual who can police ideas of what is okay or not, especially in terms of queerness or transness, saying things like ‘you’re looking too dark, too fat, who will marry you’. But it’s from that very position that they can do the opposite.” 

Looking at where the aunty figure fits into society today is a thought worthy of consideration. They are figures within the family with the authority to accept and even vouch for those of the younger generation. “In witnessing the factors that make a younger person different–in terms of their identity or choices–they can choose to decide what is good, moral or acceptable. Aunties can take account of the queer place they hold, and be alternate role models, or permit young people to be who they are. With full awareness of these positions they occupy for young people, especially being peers to their parents, aunty figures have the choice to wonder how to take on the responsibility of holding the power to show what other options of gender or sexuality that the younger generation can have,” concludes Khubchandani. 

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