IN the mid-2010s when I went to visit my family in New York, they had installed an electric bidet on their toilet. It was a relief, not to mention kind of cool.
The Tushy was created by Miki Agarwal, half Indian, half Japanese, because she saw a gap in the market. The product was well received by the media. Its sales surged during the pandemic, due to the shortage of toilet paper. One report said Tushy sales were 10 times the norm; it even earned $1 million in a day.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago and Zohran Mamdani, NYC’s newly elected mayor, announced he wanted to instal bidets in the official mayoral residence. Within hours, American media treated this as if he had suggested replacing the American flag with a bidet.
Fox News called it an “elite luxury”. Social media went wild, albeit with some hilarious memes. One Democratic insider told a reporter that the socialist mayor thinks he’s “flush with cash” to buy bidets.
I was surprised. We’re talking about bidets. Basic hygiene. And yet, this has become a referendum on American values, elitism and what counts as appropriately patriotic bathroom behaviour. But in America, a brown man with a non-Western name expressing a preference rooted in his cultural background is treated as a newsworthy scandal rather than routine home improvement.
What’s really being said here? We know it’s not about the bidet. It’s about what gets coded as ‘normal’ versus ‘other’ in Western discourse.
When an American politician renovates a bathroom with marble, it’s not news. When an American Muslim mayor mentions installing a bidet, it becomes a crisis of values. The disconnect is wild.
Americans will spend hundreds of dollars on face creams, luxury bath products, and water bottles that cost more than a bidet attachment. But suggest using water after using the toilet and suddenly it’s too much. The same country that invented the $20,000 trashcan finds bidets extravagant.
The controversy is just the latest example of how the US media has treated Mamdani’s tenure since he announced he was running. When he announced his housing plan to convert vacant office buildings into affordable apartments, the New York Post called it “socialist fantasy”. When he proposed free subway rides for low-income New Yorkers, Fox News had an entire segment on “who’s paying for freeloaders”. When he attended a Diwali celebration at City Hall — as his predecessors did for years — the media asked whether he was “pandering to ethnic communities”.
Is it a ‘new era of cleanliness’ or an ‘elite luxury’?
It’s equally striking to see how resistance to Mamdani has evolved. Early coverage focused on whether a democratic socialist could govern effectively. These are the kinds of questions that journalists should ask. But as his policies have gained traction, the criticism has shifted from substance to style, from governance to optics, from what he does to who he is.
The media then settled into a comfortable narrative: Mamdani is too radical, too foreign, irrespective of what he proposes. His background is the story rather than his policies. A bidet becomes evidence of elitism. Attending cultural events becomes identity politics. Speaking about his immigrant parents becomes playing the ethnic card.
This is the exhausting reality for politicians of colour in America: your competence is perpetually questioned, your motives are perpetually suspect, and your cultural identity is perpetually on trial. You can’t just be a mayor; you must constantly prove you’re American enough, normal enough, unthreatening enough.
And yet, despite the media hysteria, Mamdani’s approval ratings remain solid. They were 48 per cent at the end of January 2026, the highest they’ve ever been, according to Newsweek. People appreciate his policies — from raising taxes on the wealthiest to raising minimum wage to $30 an hour. Many supported him after the bidet comment saying “a new era of cleanliness in New York begins”. Even a proctologist weighed in saying from a hygiene perspective “[a bidet] just clearly makes sense”.
The gap between media coverage and public reception is growing. Perhaps that’s the real story here. Not that the media lost its mind over a bathroom fixture, but that increasingly, Americans themselves aren’t buying the outrage. Fox News et al. will move on to the next manufactured outrage. Mamdani may or may not get his bidets. But the message has been sent: even as mayor of the largest US city, your cultural background will be scrutinised more than your policies.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world will continue using water, unbothered by US anxiety about basic hygiene. We figured this out generations ago. Perhaps one day the US media will catch up. Until then, we’ll keep watching them agonise over bathroom fixtures while pretending it’s about anything other than discomfort with difference.
The writer is a former journalism instructor.
X: @LedeingLady
Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2026
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