Tinder marketing and transnational postfeminist media cultures: “modern” women as single, not sorry?

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how Tinder marketing responds to gender politics and discourses within contemporary postfeminist media cultures transnationally. We provide a comparative semiotic analysis of the prominent Tinder advertising campaign Single, Not Sorry, which runs across several European countries, as well as the UK and USA, with marketing material from Tinder India’s YouTube page. Challenging sexist cultural stereotypes and norms of feminine sexual passivity and modesty has a clear economic rationale as a marketing strategy for Tinder. The Tinder marketing media analysed appears to be largely aimed at young women and speaks to postfeminist notions of women’s new sexual freedom in global neoliberal modernity, with Tinder positioning itself as a tool enabling such. Yet, as we illustrate, some key differences emerge across these marketing messages about women’s empowerment and the kind of gender roles and “modern” heterosexual relations made available through Tinder in the European and Indian contexts. The analysis we offer contributes to scholarship on transnational postfeminist media cultures and discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Tinder
• dating apps
• postfeminist
• transnational
• marketing

Introduction

Dating and hookup apps are a recent form of technology-assisted dating, where users search for, match with, and chat to potential dating partners in real time based on location, defined as location-based real-time dating apps (LBRTD) (Gaby David 2016, 2). Research points to a normalization of the regular use of dating apps in a range of cultures and locations transnationally (Kath Albury et al. 2019; Debarun Chakraborty 2019; Elisabeth Timmermans et al. 2019). Tinder is a popular LBRTD app, where users “swipe” through a pool of users to indicate whether they are interested in other users or not. Whilst not the first dating app released to market, Tinder has become dominant in the dating landscape for young adults in many locations around the world, with around 75 million active monthly users (Mansoor Iqbal 2022). Tinder was the most downloaded dating app globally as of May 2021 (Statista 2021) and is available in 190 countries and 40 languages (Iqbal 2022). Tinder’s influence on dating and sexual culture has been subject to much discussion in popular media and in some academic literature, with scholars attempting to map Tinder’s impact and position in contemporary dating cultures. Here we explore how Tinder responds via its marketing to gender politics and discourses in contemporary postfeminist media cultures. We build on research by feminist media scholars who have outlined a recent and popular promotion of individualistic self-making discourses which emphasize women’s empowerment and socio-economic mobility within the boundaries of patriarchal expectations and norms as central to contemporary discourses about gender (Banet-Weiser Sarah 2018; Gill 2016; Kanai Akane 2019).

The research from which this paper is drawn explored the role of Tinder in shaping prominent ideals of intimate relationships as a distinct and widely popular intervention into heterosexual dating sites and apps. This involved a review of Tinder’s prominent advertising campaigns globally, and a semiotic analysis of key examples within these campaigns to explore the symbolic constructions and discourses of intimacy Tinder promotes. Here we analyse the prominent Tinder advertising campaign Single, Not Sorry, which runs across several European countries, as well as the UK and USA, as well as some key media from Tinder’s promotion in India. Tinder India provides a valuable comparison, as it appeared to be Tinder’s only non-western campaign to adopt explicitly pro-feminist, “female-empowerment” rhetoric. Our analysis thus helps illuminate key cultural and Eurocentric distinctions in certain postfeminist media discourses. While research into the marketing of dating apps exists in the disciplines of advertising and marketing, no research to our knowledge has explored this area from a critical humanities perspective. Our literature review was focused upon the growing body of scholarly research from a diverse range of fields across the humanities and social sciences that has emerged around the cultures of use of dating and hookup apps, and we were particularly interested in gendered relations and experiences around such. As one of the most prominent global dating apps, Tinder is now a specific focus of many studies, and we draw on the available humanities and social science research on Tinder to establish the context for its marketing. Some of the key concerns of research into Tinder to date include motivations for use (Timmermans, Elisabeth and Cédric Courtois 2018) risk and safety on dating and hookup apps (Albury et al. 2019; Gillett, Rosalie. 2021) impression management, and the gendered dynamics of use and sexual scripts that play out and are challenged via this new environment for courtship, flirting, and sex (Jenny van Hooff. 2020; Dana Berkowitz, et al. 2021; Francesca Comunello. 2020). Below we outline this research in brief to frame the cultures of dating and intimacy Tinder draws upon and responds to in its marketing before going on to discuss scholarship on contemporary postfeminist media cultures, which we suggest helps explain and contextualize the kind of gendered messages communicated in Tinder marketing. We then provide a description and analysis of some key examples from the Single, Not Sorry campaign and Tinder India’s YouTube media.

Single, Not Sorry is an advertising campaign promoting messages of unashamed and self-determined singlehood and hedonism. The marketing media viewed from Tinder India’s YouTube page were, in distinction, more varied, with a range of taglines and campaign approaches used. As we outline in our discussion, both the Single, Not Sorry campaign and the Tinder India marketing material analyze appear to be aimed primarily at young women, and both promote women’s “freedom” and “empowerment” via Tinder. Through a comparative discussion of Single Not Sorry and marketing media from Tinder India, we illustrate some of the ways that marketing messages about, and symbols of, women’s empowerment shift via cultural context. Some key differences emerge, we suggest, across these marketing messages about the kind of gender roles and “modern” heterosexual relations made available through Tinder in the European and Indian contexts. We argue that the Tinder marketing media analysed speaks to the kind of global postfeminist “disarticulation” noted by Angela McRobbie (2009), and signals Tinder as a tool for “modernity” and “freedom” from the constraints of gender stereotypes and gender roles implied as products of “the past” and the “non-modern” in racialized and colonial logics (Maria Lugones, 2007). An overarching discourse is also constant across these transnational campaigns, we suggest, whereby women’s supposed “freedom” to forego committed relationships and engage in casual sex with men is symbolically equated with much more radical “freedoms” long sought in feminist scholarly and activist projects from heteronormative and patriarchal social structures of intimacy and family life. The discussion of Tinder marketing we offer here thus contributes to scholarship on transnational postfeminist media cultures more broadly.

Tinder: gendered user dynamics and sexual scripts

Tinder’s shift towards a visual focus, its “swipe-based” interface, and its deployment of location-based real time technology for dating and hook-up purposes makes it distinct from earlier Internet dating sites, which were more static, less interactive, and more textually orientated (David and Cambre 2016). Tinder’s interface design and affordances have been suggested to potentially stabilize, validate, and make more culturally legible fluid styles of relationship and connection. As Jin Lee (2019) notes, “By explicitly asking if users would like to ‘keep swiping’ after a match, the app’s gamified design allows users not to interrupt their game flow for fun.” (2). Indeed, casual sex is a predominant claimed motivation and desired outcome for Tinder users, especially for men (Leah E LeFebvre 2018; Milena R Lopes et al. 2019). Key questions have then been raised in relation to how Tinder, through its interface design and key “swipe” functionalities, may foster resistance to, or reinforce, traditional and stereotypical gendered sexual scripts. In line with masculine norms of assertiveness, men are consistently found to be the first to send a message on Tinder (MacKenzie A Christensen. 2020; Comunello, Parisi, and Ieracitano 2020; Elisabeth Timmermans. 2018). Heterosexual women report swiping carefully and selectively on Tinder, with a pre-conceived perception that men will be aggressively seeking casual sex through the app (Comunello, Parisi, and Ieracitano 2020; Gillett 2021). Young adult Tinder users have also reported an expectation of casual sex that Christensen (2020) suggests combines with more traditional romantic expectations, creating a “hybrid dating script” for these users of the app, which continues to position men in control of both sexual and romantic interactions on Tinder. Other research has suggested that Tinder’s product actively encourages traditional gendered scripts and stereotypes. Berkowitz et al. (2021) argue that Tinder is designed and marketed as a tool to reduce the uncertainty and risk inherent to forming intimate relationships, which they suggest means users resist vulnerability and conform to traditional heterosexual gender norms, as well as adhering to racist and classist stereotypes in their matching behaviour. Eva Illouz (2007) argues more generally that the online dating focus on profile photographs foregrounds the body as “the main source of social and economic value” (81). It has been suggested that this logic of market value translates to dating and hookup apps such as Tinder, where heterosexual men assign a woman’s value to gendered ideals of her sexual propriety and attractiveness (Laura Thompson 2018).

Some research has explored in more detail the way that gender, sexuality, and race structure the experiences of users on Tinder. Tinder has been found to be a sometimes-hostile environment for women and gender-diverse users. Women and gender-diverse users have reported being concerned about, and experiencing, objectification, judgement, discrimination, harassment, and shame in their interactions on Tinder (Albury et al. 2019; Gillett 2021; Lopes et al. 2019). Gillett (2021) argues that safely navigating this space comes at a cost to women, as the strategies women employ to stay safe and comfortable on dating apps in response to male harassment, abuse, and “intimate intrusions” restricts their ability to freely participate in the way men often take for granted. Research has also explored the ways that racism, sexism, and homophobia intersect on dating apps to shape the experiences of Indigenous and black and brown users, and the strategies deployed to try and manage this (Bronwyn Carlson 2019; Shantel Buggs 2017). Carlson (2019) documents this in relation to the experiences of Indigenous users in Australia, outlining the sexist and racist abuse and discrimination faced by Indigenous women on the app, and the racism and homophobia faced by Indigenous men on hookup apps. Kenneth R Hanson (forthcoming) shows how, in North American colleges, dating app user practices result in “exclusionary norms that privilege heteronormativity and whiteness. (894). These authors highlight the need for more critical intersectional research into dating apps.

The research outlined here in brief helps to shed light on the structuring of user experience on dating and hookup apps, and gives some insight into the kind of cultures of dating and intimacy that emerge in relation to Tinder. Adjacently, our analysis of Tinder marketing materials illuminates the kind of postfeminist discourses, as well as gendered and racialized subjectivities constructed around Tinder use.

Postfeminist media social and sexual contracts, and the analysis of Tinder marketing

Accounts of postfeminist media cultures in the context of neoliberalism and globalization help explain the kind of contemporary cultural dynamics that Tinder’s product design and marketing clearly speaks to. In the mid-2000s, Gill, Rosalind. (2003, 2007) outlined a kind of postfeminist “sexual subjectification” of women in media that has been key for understandings of contemporary discourses of femininity and sexuality in media cultures, particularly advertising. Gill suggests that via postfeminist “sexual subjectification,” women’s confidence, sexual freedom, and free choice is depicted and valued in media representations of women, yet in a way that retains the patriarchal status quo of women’s bodies being available for a heteronormative masculinized gaze. “Heterosexy” femininity (Amy Dobson 2015) is increasingly positioned as something women individually and freely “choose” to embrace and find pleasurable, Gill suggests, and are thus increasingly encouraged via media and cultural discourses towards an internalized objectifying gaze (Gill 2003). Women have long been depicted via popular media cultures as being sexually open and available, often in racialized ways, as, for instance, Sut Jhally (2007) and Diane Railton (2005) document regarding popular music videos. What Gill articulates as “sexual subjectification,” is the way in which, in the postfeminist era, discursive and semiotic indicators of women’s “empowered” and “agentic” status have become a kind of cultural pre-condition for their sexual objectification. McRobbie (2009) suggests that this focus on individual empowerment and agency helps to produce a “disarticulation” of feminism in Westernized cultural contexts—a process of undermining the need for collective solidarity and replacing it with an affirmation of gender equality as already achieved in “modernity.” Within the kind of “postfeminist cultural contract” McRobbie (2009) identifies, new kinds of sexual “freedoms” for young women are offered up via media and popular culture on the condition that women’s desires, as well as their bodies and aesthetics, match with phallocentric patriarchal norms. That is, young women are also now expected to be “up for it” desiring subjects in order to be “cool girls,” including accepting casualized forms of misogyny that abound in postfeminist dating cultures (Lee 2019; Dobson 2014). Heterosexual men are often positioned in “modern” Westernized postfeminist cultural contexts to internalize a sense of themselves as now perhaps somewhat “less accountable” for their own power and privilege in sexual markets, as women are positioned as agentic subjects who have “freely chosen” their social positions. On Tinder specifically, Lee (2019) suggests that a patriarchal idealization of the “cool girl” has developed out of this gendered socio-cultural dynamic, which dovetails conveniently with the broader cultural economic discourse of “free market access.” The “cool girl” figure in postfeminist popular culture, as Lee (2019) summarizes, is celebrated for her confidence, rebellious spirit, and sexual freedom, whilst maintaining traditional feminine qualities.

Black and brown feminist scholars have foregrounded the need for more intersectional and transnational approaches to the study of postfeminist media cultures (Jess Butler 2013; Simidele Dosekun 2015; Kimberly Springer 2007). Dosekun (2015) argues that postfeminist sentiments in media cultures occur globally as individualized discourses of female empowerment through consumption, beauty cultures, and heteronormative self-making. However, she argues, there is a need to better account for how such discourses of empowerment are presented to women in uneven ways, contingent on the “feminine subjects who have the material, discursive, and imaginative capital to access and to buy into it” (2015, p. 966). Butler (2013) argues that while postfeminist media still overtly or subtly privileges and centers a white middle-class, heterosexual subject as feminist scholars have noted, “this does not necessarily mean that nonwhite, non-middle-class, and non-heterosexual women are altogether excluded from, or somehow unaffected by, postfeminist discourse” (48). Butler’s (2013) analysis of postfeminist representations charts some of the ways in which racial and ethnic differences are commodified in postfeminist representations. She suggests that often an increased representation of non-white female bodies in postfeminist media works to reinforce the logic that “old school” feminist and racial politics are no longer necessary (50). Butler’s (2013) also neatly summarizes the global dynamics involved in “disarticulating feminism” put forth by McRobbie (2009, 24), whereby non-Western women in the Global South are positioned as “sexually constrained and victimized, in (false) contrast to “sexually free” young women in the West, thereby recreating and reinforcing notions of Western superiority while weakening potential alliances based on a feminist post-colonialist critique” (Butler 2013, 47). The Tinder brand and its success, we suggest, is firmly situated within these broader cultural discourses whereby feminism has been “disarticulated,” particularly in the Global North, and the need for feminism displaced onto women in the Global South, where neoliberal notions of “modernity” are structured around gendered and colonial constructs of sexual freedom and individualism (Lugones 2007).

Methods

We position Tinder as both a cultural product and a cultural actor. Following Ian Hutchby (2001)’s concept of technological affordances, Tinder is both a technology where existing ideals of gender and “modern” intimate relationships are accessed, yet also a technology that filters and renders these ideals in specific ways. In this research, in late 2020 Samuel 1 searched and catalogued the international online marketing from Tinder. Samuel identified campaigns targeting markets from the United States, United Kingdom, Europe (Germany, Sweden, France, Spain, Denmark, Italy), India, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Korea, and Japan. After completing exploratory searches, it was noted that a single campaign – Single, Not Sorry – was running across the US, the European countries mentioned, and the UK, adopting a globalized, feminist-aligned, sex-positive discourse. In preliminary analysis, we noted that Tinder utilized a similar discursive, feminist-aligned strategy in the Indian marketing materials viewed, albeit with specific cultural distinctions and more varied slogans and materials. That is, both the Single, Not Sorry and Tinder India campaigns centred on constructing Tinder as a tool for women’s sexual empowerment, but with distinct strategies in the Westernized and Indian contexts. Tinder employed significantly different strategies in its other markets, particularly in Southeast Asia and Korea, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss these strategies here. In this paper we focus our analysis on some key material from the Single, Not Sorry campaign, compared with some key media from Tinder India. This comparison helps to shed light on how postfeminist discourses of women’s supposed sexual freedom and empowerment circulate in these cultural contexts—with the Westernised context framed as “modern” and the Indian context as “aspiring towards the modern” in terms of sex and gendered relations in the marketing materials viewed.

Media artefacts were sourced from the Tinder YouTube accounts for each of the regions mentioned above, as well as case studies published online from advertising and media studios involved in the campaign production for Single, Not Sorry. For the Single, Not Sorry campaign, a total of 58 media artefacts were catalogued and transcribed. The subtitles of Swedish, French, Spanish, Italian and Danish advertisements were translated with Google Translate, and this was used as the basis of transcription. We identified eight key examples of the campaign’s postfeminist discourses to analyse in detail, which contained both video and image advertising. The remaining videos were largely translations or slight variations of the core examples analysed. For Tinder India, we drew primarily from the Tinder India YouTube account, which contained a more varied range of media artefacts, mostly in English. Prominently featured during data collection were a series of explainer-style videos which draw on feminist discourses to unpack sex and gender stereotypes, and address issues such as consent, safe sex, and women’s safety while dating, #StreeSwipes. This series of videos represents a partnership with the organisation Vitamin Stree, a social organisation focused on providing progressive sex, gender identity, and sexuality information in India. Another clear advertising series we identified was the #StartSomethingEpic campaign. Other videos outside these series contain varied taglines and hashtags, including ads for Tinder-sponsored music events, and interview-style videos featuring young adults talking about their experiences in contemporary dating culture. From Tinder India YouTube, we analysed seven videos in detail, three from the #StreeSwipes series, four from #StartSomethingEpic.

In our analysis we were most interested in the kinds of gendered discourses and social scripts of intimate relationships that were communicated and gestured to. We noted key themes, messages, and narratives signaled through the text and images, drawing on the deployment of semiotics and discourse analysis used by feminist cultural studies scholars to explore gender and power in visual media cultures (Rosalind Gill 2007; McRobbie 2009; Sarah Banet-Weiser 2012). Across the Single, Not Sorry campaign we noted the key narrative of singlehood as an adult lifestyle for women, and excitement, spontaneity, and rebellion within this, as we discuss below. Across the Tinder India videos analysed we noted discursive themes of challenging gendered sexual stereotypes and addressing issues of safety and consent as related to this. Challenging sexist cultural stereotypes and norms of feminine sexual passivity and modesty has a clear economic rationale as a marketing strategy for Tinder trans-nationally. The Tinder marketing media viewed for this project appeared to be largely aimed at young women, and the materials we analyzed in detail spoke to postfeminist notions of women’s new sexual freedom in global modernity, with Tinder positioning itself as a tool enabling this. Yet, as we discuss below, some key differences emerge between the Westernized Single, Not Sorry campaign and the Tinder India videos in terms of the message communicated to women about the kind of gender roles and “modern” heterosexual relations made available through Tinder. We suggest this is reflective of how Tinder’s marketing strategies speak transnationally to precisely the kind of postfeminist cultural dynamics noted above, that serve to reinforce notions of Western superiority and disarticulate the need for feminist critique of gendered heterosexual dynamics in the Global North, whilst foregrounding the need for such in the Global South. While a detailed discussion of researcher standpoint and the situatedness of knowledge (Donna Haraway. 1988) is beyond the scope of this paper, we feel it is important to note that we are two white digital media scholars (one a cisgendered male and the other a queer non-binary woman), living in the settler-colonial context of Australia. Our perspectives and analysis are partial and limited, as are all perspectives following Haraway (1988) most importantly here, partial in that we have no lived experience of everyday life on and offline in black or brown bodies in colonial contexts and the racism it often involves; nor do we have lived experience of everyday life in the cultural contexts where the marketing material we discuss circulates.

Single, Not Sorry: singlehood as a “lifestyle” choice for adult women

Single, Not Sorry was Tinder’s first major branding campaign, which ran from 2018–20 in the United States and Europe, and consisted of a range of short videos, taglines and images advertised on social media, digital displays, and outdoors advertising. Through the numerous variations of this campaign, across multiple languages and media, Single, Not Sorry generally focuses on young single women in mixed-gender groups in late-night city and urban settings, engaged in a range of fun and playful social activities. Being single is seen as occupying a position of tension within modern Western societies (Anthea Taylor 2012) and research has found there is significant pressure on single women to “get a man” and conform to ideals of heterosexual gender norms and romantic ideals (Tuula Gordon 2016). The Single, Not Sorry campaign puts these social pressures front and center. This campaign works to challenge the notion of singlehood as a purgatory-like temporal zone between the supposed “stability” of committed relationships. Single, Not Sorry provides an alternative cultural narrative to the perception that Tinder is a solution to the problem of singleness. The campaign slogans celebrate women “dating the way they want to” and emphasize the freedom available in eschewing long-term romantic relationships. The marketing also broadly aligns the Tinder brand with some feminist ideals and discourses, questioning ideals around coupledom as the desired norm. Instead, there is a promotion of platonic, temporary, and nonexclusive forms of intimacy as equally—if not more—valid, valuable, and desirable as committed long-term romantic relationships, particularly for women.

Visually and affectively this campaign features recurrent depictions of young women experiencing excitement, euphoria, and enjoyment of “singlehood.” For instance, in one video ad from Sweden, a teenage-looking white, pale-skinned girl walks along the edge of an indoor pool at night-time, before her and her female friend push each other into the pool wearing their clothes. The two are shown in slow motion jumping and splashing, with other young people in the background, before the girl emerges from the water to smile broadly at the camera. The copy states that singlehood brings “the tingling in the stomach” (2019d). A poster for the US market shows two young Black women in a nightlife setting; one is spraying champagne; the other has her arms raised in a gesture of triumph and celebration, and both are grinning and laughing. The copy reads “Congrats on your big breakup.” These two women also appear in another sharable gif, where they pose a photo holding up martinis, with the text “Happily ever now” in bold letters across the image (n.d.). Another US poster proclaims that “Single never has to go home early” over a group of boisterous and inebriated-looking ethnically-diverse young adults in a late-night diner setting, costumed to indicate a post-club context (n.d). In a French advertisement, the female voiceover asks the viewer what “being free” means to them, and then narrates various responses: “bring out the big game”/“at least for memories”/“no need for a fairy tale”/“I write my own story”/“become your own hero”/“I’m not looking for half, I’m more than half.” This text is spoken over a series of very fast cut scenes of young people of notably diverse appearances and ethnicities “partying” – playing basketball, riding through empty streets at night together on bikes and scooters, getting in and out of vehicles, and texting and scrolling on their phones. A key scene in this advertisement shows a young, brown-skinned woman with fingernails painted to say “stay free” in English, which she displays explicitly to the camera to end the commercial (2020). Overall, singlehood is framed as a position of self-determination for young women, with commitment positioned as a limitation on one’s ability to be spontaneous. This is most evident through the celebration of breakups and appropriation of the romance narrative cliche “happily ever after” to “Happily ever now.”

Single, Not Sorry and racialized “light rebellion”

A notable repeated motif within the Single, Not Sorry campaign is the depiction of young women engaging in “lightly rebellious” activities with men via depictions of women trespassing onto private property and breaking into swimming pools with male dates and friends. The racialized dynamics of representation are particularly evident within this motif. One poster for the US market (n.d) depicts a very young-looking white woman and a white man climbing a chain-link fence marked “KEEP OUT,” with a stormy grey afternoon sky behind them and the words “Single not sorry” centred across the middle of the image. The young woman is photographed from a low angle. She is wearing high-top sneakers, very short ripped black denim shorts, and a midriff leather jacket, which work together to suggest her youthfulness. Her long blonde hair is out, her face is slightly flushed and glossed with sweat, and her head is held high as she scans the horizon. The man, who appears significantly older, has his back to the camera. He is positioned lower than her and is looking at her on the other side of the fence. The bright red “KEEP OUT” sign sits just next to her leg, signalling to viewers that she has made it over, and her male companion is following her lead. Another iteration of this image displayed on a billboard uses the copy “Single does what Single wants.” We suggest that the signs of whiteness for both bodies and youthfulness for the girl allow this scene to be read as “innocent” fun and a kind of postfeminist “permissible” rebelliousness equated with “empowerment” for some young women in ways structured intersectionally. While, as we’ve noted above, cisgendered heterosexy black women, as well as queer-coded bodies, appear in this campaign in scenes of urban partying and “empowered” celebration, depictions of more butch-looking or black female bodies trespassing into private property would suggest much less culturally permissible and “empowering” forms of rebelliousness and risk and veer too far for Tinder, perhaps, into signifying criminality.

A short video advertisement from France titled “Karim” with the tagline “Want a private pool party?,” however, clearly signifies “risk” as “part of the fun” for postfeminist cool girls (2019c), and draws on racial stereotypes towards this end. Via very quick cuts, two teenage-looking young men explore a building with torches in hand, at night-time, implying they are breaking into private property. The focus is on a brown-skinned young man—Karim—one of the few non-anglophone names used in France’s series of short video ads named to indicate potential Tinder dates. Karim is wearing a loose-fitting bright orange long-sleeved top and a gold chain necklace. He looks unflinchingly at a camera positioned below him, and sways with the beat of the music, appearing to be inviting the viewer into the scene. The song lyrics “Come on” play with an upbeat dance tempo. The video cuts to then show two young men on the side of a large swimming pool. A teenage-looking young woman dressed in a long skirt is picked up and spun around playfully by Karim, albeit with some struggle, suggesting she may be thrown in the pool by him. The other male is holding a torch, next to them. In the next cut, both the young woman and Karim are shown diving into the pool, but this cut flashes on screen so quickly that it is difficult to decipher immediately what is happening. We’d suggest that while the threat of the young woman being physically overpowered by Karim is hinted at here, especially in the fastness of the cuts and lack of clarity around the action, in the end it is signalled to be “her choice” to dive into the pool, fully clothed, with Karim. In sum, a sense of risk and danger for the young woman is constructed in this scene but is ultimately neutralized and disavowed: she is depicted alone with two young men in a break-in scene; her date is shown physically overpowering her while his friend stands by and watches; they are then depicted jumping into the pool together.

In both of these two ads, we’d suggest that danger, risk, fun, and rebelliousness are alluded to in racialized and classed ways: while the US ad depicts a kind of postfeminist permissible “light rebelliousness,” with the young white woman leading her older-looking white male date over the fence, the French ad gestures more explicitly towards danger and risk-taking in dating for young women through a reliance on racialized stereotypes in the construction of “Karim” and his “private pool party.” We suggest the various Single, Not Sorry ads viewed, which depict trespassing private property while dating, align with the kind of postfeminist sexual contract McRobbie (2009) suggests is on offer to young women, and Lee (2019) suggests is part of a Tinder “cool girl” ideal, whereby women are invited to participate in casual sex, asked to withhold complaint or critique of patriarchal and phallocentric heterosexual norms, and here, also perhaps asked to reposition the hinted at risks and dangers of dating male strangers as exciting and fun.

Tinder India

Tinder India’s marketing strategy is a multifaceted digital campaign across social media, with a particular emphasis on video content. This content not only promotes Tinder as a product, but also takes a pedagogical tone, supposing to educate young adults about “safe” dating practises and emphasize the “empowering” experiences of modern dating cultures for young women. This is primarily achieved by drawing upon a feminist-aligned resistance to traditional gendered sexual scripts, combined with an emphasis on sexual freedom, casual dating, and consent. The tagline “Single Not Sorry” plays a smaller role in Tinder India’s marketing compared with the Western campaign. The “Single Not Sorry” phrase appears in one video analysed, which works to destigmatize singlehood as a social position for young women and suggest singleness as a position of rebellion and empowerment from early marriage (2019b). This “Single Not Sorry” video is the opening video of the #StreeSwipes series, a 2020 brand partnership with Vitamin Stree, which explores how young Indian women are “changing stereotypes around dating, sex and relationships” through short YouTube videos. This series of videos encourages young women to not be ashamed of their unmarried status and embrace the freedom of “modern” life to choose the type and nature of relationships they enter.

Resisting traditionally feminine gendered sexual scripts by embracing casual sex is a recurring message throughout the #StreeSwipes series, as well as the other Indian Tinder marketing materials analysed. The #StreeSwipes video, “Not Here for Hookups” speaks directly to this theme (2019a). Narrated mostly in English by a young Indian female voice, the video discusses the need for young women to challenge gender stereotypes of passivity and virginity as highly valued. Visually, the video has a pastel colour palette, with pinks and purples particularly dominant, and is filmed top-down as a cast of brown-skinned hands manipulate props onscreen. Paper craft props are heavily utilized and supplemented by other objects. For instance, a typewriter, a bra, and a sex toy are used in a humorous and euphemistic way to visually represent sex, gender stereotypes, and dating. The video argues that sexist stereotypes mean women lack social freedom to have casual sex, arguing that “whilst [men] are free to explore, unmarried woman have to stay pure [and] virginal.” Hence, the video’s title and message aim to unpack the common phrase in Tinder culture “Not Here for Hookups,” and destigmatize women who are seeking hookups via the app. These stereotypes are accepted, the video argues, due to cultural norms and media representations of women being restricted to limited expressions of sexuality. “Lipstick under my Burkha” – a film about women seeking freedom that was initially rejected by the Indian Censor Board for its sexual content—is referenced to demonstrate the cultural and social repression of women’s sexuality in India. The video emphasizes that women should be able to participate in casual sex free from social judgement. A survey called “What do I want?” is depicted on screen using animated graphics, with three levels of physical intimacy specified to indicate that women too have sexual desires; a woman’s hand circles “First Base,” “SEX,” not circling “cuddles.” The video then quotes a “survey by Tinder” stating that “79% of women believe that a good sex life is key to a good relationship.” The video continues by stating that the growing dating culture in India is a “gamechanger” for women’s sexual needs and desires, showing a golf ball heading towards a hole labelled “traditional outlook,” before sharply turning and going into the hole labelled “modern outlook.” Viewers are informed that “millennials and Gen Z” are rejecting social constructs and engaging in sexual experimentation through porn, fantasiz, using sex toys, and speaking about sex openly, which is “totally chill these days.” The third and final segment is about safety, where “the freedom of choice has the responsibility of consent.” Risk is present for women in dating cultures, the video argues, and understanding consent is important. Whilst the Tinder app is not mentioned directly, “social discovery apps” are claimed to be the means to pursue “modern” dating cultures and achieve more social and sexual emancipatory outcomes for women. The use of a smartphone and visual reference to a swiping interface is frequently present, particularly when the video refers to freedom of choice or sexual exploration.

The Tinder India media analysed had a strong focus on promoting sexual consent. The centrepiece of this aspect of their marketing is a website launched by Tinder in partnership with Yuva and Pink Legal – www.letstalkconsent.com. This features detailed explanations of consent, refutations to common myths and assumptions about consent, as well as resources for those who’ve experienced sexual violence. The site contains several short vignettes from young Indian adults who reflect on how they first came to understand and learn about consent. The website prominently features a short film produced by Tinder India entitled “Closure,” about the fallout of a heterosexual couple whose relationship broke down after the male misinterpreted his partner’s silence as consent. Tinder India also produced a series of short product advertisements in 2018, introducing the app in a way that emphasizes safety, mutuality, and consent in heterosexual dating, entitled #StartSomethingEpic. Supporting the broader campaign which champions freedom, the fun of dating with Tinder, and safety, these ads focus on specific affordances of Tinder’s interface—mutual matching, match-then-message, and unmatching. One example depicts a young Indian man in a taxi, fixing his well-styled hair. The woman next to him sheepishly tucks stray strands of her own windswept hair behind her ear. The man turns to her, and brags about how women cannot resist him. The woman laughs at this, and the man appears offended, reiterating his irresistibility. The woman stops laughing and turns to her phone, saying “Watch me” and presses an “unmatch” button on her phone. The man disappears in a puff of smoke: “Mismatch? Unmatch” (2018b). Another ad in this series depicts a young Indian woman sitting alone by a quiet outdoor pool. A young Indian man approaches her. He tries to speak and get her attention multiple times, but he’s rendered mute and fails. The woman swipes left with her finger and the man is thrown into the pool by an invisible force. “Only people you’ve matched with can message you” appears as text on the screen (2018c). As with the other advertisements in Tinder India’s marketing, freedom of choice and the empowerment of women is emphasized. The exaggerated visual consequences in the videos—a man being rendered mute, a date physically disappearing, a rejected man being magically thrown away from the woman into a pool—work to suggest that Tinder’s technology is a force that literally protects women from unsafe, undesirable, and implicitly “un-modern” men. Assuring women of their safety is a forefront concern across the Tinder India material, along with the explicit alignment with feminist discourses that deconstruct and question gendered sexual scripts and stereotypes.

Disarticulating feminism; articulating “freedom” for women in modernity as casual sex

Single, Not Sorry resists committed relationships and marriage, celebrating women’s freedom as a kind of equation whereby freedom from commitment stands in for freedom from heteronormative and patriarchal forms of intimacy and family. However, this freedom is implied as most available for women whilst dating and having casual sex with men. Here, as McRobbie (2009) suggests of much postfeminist media discourse, feminist ideas have been instrumentalized to suggest that more sexual freedom for women is evidence of liberal Western global superiority. The “disarticulation” of feminism is perhaps further enacted through Tinder’s deployment of certain feminist concerns and discourses to promote their product as a crucial tool for “modern,” empowered women. We’ve suggested in our analysis that Westernized global-northern markets are positioned through Tinder marketing media as having achieved women’s liberation in terms of gendered sexual scripts, with casual sex positioned as fun, safe, and fully de-stigmatized in such cultural contexts. Female empowerment is framed here through the idea of perpetual “singledom” being a modern and desirable “lifestyle choice” for young adult women. With gender equity achieved, women are relatively “safe” (physically and legally), this campaign implies, by virtue of its overall marketing strategy. They can have fun and participate in light rebelliousness, risk, and hedonism with men as the adventure on offer for postfeminist cool girls. True to the kind of postfeminist media sensibilities noted earlier, ethnic and classed differences have been digested and commodified in these Tinder ads as different “flavours” of excitement (Butler 2013; Springer, Yvonne Tasker, and Negra 2007; Gill 2007) available via Tinder. As we’ve discussed, racial stereotypes are drawn upon to construct a continuum from of “exciting risk” to “male threat” in this campaign, to different degrees in different media artefacts, often contingent on the raced and classed subject positions signified visually through the bodies presented and their coding. The potential threat of violence associated with meeting up with male strangers is subtly gestured to via such racial stereotypes, before being ultimately defused and disavowed by subtly signifying women’s ultimate “choice” to participate.

By contrast, the Indian Tinder promotional media examined strongly emphasizes the safety of Tinder, and the desirability of “modern” young men who are educated around sexual consent and gender stereotypes—men who would not throw a young woman into a pool without her explicit consent. Westernized women are depicted climbing over fences and breaking into private properties with men; by sharp contrast, Indian women can be seen playing with puppies on a grassy lawn, with implicitly gentle “modern” male companions. The key messages connoted across the Indian Tinder marketing media take a pedagogical tone about mutuality, consent, and in particular, young women’s “control” and “safe” participation in casual dating and sex through the app. The Tinder India media examined works to position the app itself as a tool for women’s safety and thus also for “modernity” more broadly, by helping to usher in new and more equanimous gendered social and sexual relations. “Freedom” is entwined with, and a consequence of, safety and a risk-free dating culture for women, which is presented as an ongoing feminist struggle in the Indian context, as distinct from the Western one. The Indian market is positioned through the Tinder media analysed as “aspiring towards” Euro-centric notions of “modernity” in relation to gendered social scripts. Tinder India positions itself as explicitly aligned with certain liberal feminist goals and discourses, through its partnerships and video collaborations with Vitamin Stree, Yuva, and Pink Legal, which work to unpack gender stereotypes about sex and relationships and address the gendered dynamics of sexual violence in India.

The focus on women in Tinder marketing transnationally speaks to the underlying cultural assumption that men are already sexually “empowered” and “free” from social scripts that might constrain them in the enjoyment of being single, autonomous, and unashamedly hedonistic in their pursuits of pleasure and fun through casual sex. Tinder seeks to challenge gendered stereotypes and sexual scripts, however, does so whilst idealising the long-standing patriarchal notion of hegemonic masculine singlehood. Thus, we suggest that the postfeminist marketing of Tinder promotes a heteronormative gendered “free market” ideal, where women’s presence in the sexual market is seen to naturally confer their availability and accessibility for sex. Tinder’s advertising frames women’s sexual liberation and “modern” status as a consequence of singlehood, and thus contingent on their accessibility in commercialized dating markets. This style of “singlehood empowerment” advertising then further invisibilizes patriarchal inequalities post-singlehood. Within postfeminist discourses, women who are framed to be empowered by “their choices” are also made responsible for the patriarchal power inequalities that are revealed when this agency is enacted. The individualistic narratives of singlehood here mean that exiting, or not participating in dating and hookup cultures, are also individualized and framed as “choices.” Thus, gender inequalities in, for instance, extended relationships, marriage, and parenthood are invisibilized as systemic issues, and accountability is shifted to individual choice in line with neoliberal ideologies more broadly.

Conclusion

This study has explored Tinder’s instrumentalization of some liberal feminist discourses to promote specific dating cultures. Our semiotic analysis of marketing material from two global regions is limited, and further research could examine marketing campaigns across other regions and dating apps to better get at the nuances of postfeminist media discourses around contemporary commercialized dating cultures transnationally. Nonetheless, we suggest that this study demonstrates how feminism is “disarticulated” – that is, any need for collective solidarity is negated—most notably in Tinder’s Western marketing media through the positioning of casual sex for women as widely de-stigmatized, and the positioning of safety and violence as “defused” “non-issues” in global-northern cultural contexts. These assumed conditions are equated with women’s liberation more generally. By contrast, feminist discourses emphasising sexual consent and the need to challenge gender stereotypes are made explicit in the Tinder India promotional media analysed, through which Tinder positions itself as a key tool in the building of gender equality and “modernity” for India. Rosalind Gill (2017) suggests that what is striking about the kind of postfeminist media sensibilities she articulates is their slipperiness; that is, the “dynamism and adaptability” of media sentiments and sensibilities that account for, celebrate, and yet repudiate feminist ideas (611–612). We’d suggest these Tinder advertisements operate within such postfeminist logics, whereby a certain kind of feminist discourse is currently celebrated within what functions as a broader neoliberal logic that rejects the need for deep structural change towards social justice. That is, through Tinder’s flattening out and symbolic equation of heteronormative casual sex and dating with the upheaval of patriarchal social structures of intimate life, these more radical feminist aims are also implicitly and subtly repudiated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a Curtin Summer Research Scholarships grant.

Notes on contributors

Samuel Morris

Samuel Morris (he/him) completed a Master of Digital and Social Media at Curtin University’s School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry in 2021. His thesis examines the way Tinder’s technology and marketing shapes and contributes to ideals of intimate relationships in the contemporary dating landscape.

Amy Shields Dobson

Amy Shields Dobson (they/them) convenes the Digital and Social Media program at Curtin University, on Whadjuk Boodjar. They are an expert across gender politics, youth, and social media. They lead the Digital Intimacies research stream within Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology, and are a Gender Research Champion for Curtin’s Gender Research Network. Amy has published widely on youth sexting, gendered representations in contemporary popular media and digital cultures, and contemporary feminine subjectivities. They are the author of Postfeminist Digital Cultures, and editor of Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media.