Walk into any café in Delhi, Mumbai or Bengaluru right now and you’ll spot it before you spot the person holding it: that impossibly bright, almost neon green in a glass cup, usually photographed before it’s sipped. Matcha has stopped being a niche Japanese import and become something closer to a personality trait.
The numbers back up the vibe. Matcha menu items grew over 30% year-on-year, while social media mentions of matcha surged more than 107% in the same period. And it’s been having a real moment specifically with Gen Z. But the more interesting question isn’t what matcha is. It’s why it suddenly became the drink every woman seems to be holding.
The data on who’s behind the boom is fairly unambiguous. Gen Z women are the ones driving the trend, and they tend to be interested in fashion, beauty, travel and food, with deeper interests spanning books, fitness, photography, health and entrepreneurship. In other words, there isn’t one “type” of matcha woman. Matcha has become a drink for basically every kind of woman, which is exactly what makes it worth examining psychologically.
Coffee is fuel. Matcha is theatre. The whisking, the sifting, the specific bamboo tool, the slow bloom of colour in water, none of it is necessary to get caffeine into your bloodstream. It’s necessary to feel like you’re doing something intentional with your morning.
That’s the appeal. Matcha has crossed over from a niche drink tied to traditional Japanese tea ceremonies into a mainstream phenomenon, and the ceremonial backstory is doing a lot of psychological work. In a culture that runs on notifications and instant everything, a drink that visibly demands five slow minutes reads as self-respect.
This is the same instinct behind the rise of slow mornings, silent walks and “romanticising your routine.” The drink is really a container for a feeling: I have my life together enough to slow down.
Psychologists have long argued that consumption choices double as identity statements, and social media has only sped that up. Fashion and lifestyle trends spread through social media as people try to fit in with social norms and build a sense of community, and these small choices about what to wear or drink become a form of self expression.
Matcha checks every box for an aesthetic identity: it photographs beautifully, it signals wellness literacy, and it borrows credibility from Japanese culture without requiring any real engagement with it. Choosing matcha over coffee isn’t really about flavour preference. It’s closer to choosing a font for your personality.
For a lot of women, especially those juggling work, family and the general chaos of modern life, wellness rituals aren’t indulgent, they’re one of the few areas where outcomes feel controllable. You can’t control your inbox or your commute, but you can control what’s in your cup.
Matcha is frequently paired with collagen, adaptogens, probiotics and mushrooms in the wider functional-drinks trend, and that stacking of “good for you” ingredients matters psychologically. Each addition is a small vote of confidence: I am someone who takes care of herself. It’s less about the antioxidants and more about the identity of being a person who chooses antioxidants.
Here’s where it gets genuinely interesting. When men started ordering matcha, the internet didn’t call it healthy. It called it performative. Trends like matcha, tote bags, indie music and reading in public are typically popularised first by girls, so when boys pick them up, people online joke that they’re faking it for attention.
That reaction reveals something important: matcha was never really about the tea. It became a coded signal of a specific, feminine kind of self-presentation, calm, curated, a little bit soft-life. Once a man performs that same signal without the underlying identity it’s attached to, it reads as costume rather than character. The backlash is proof the drink was doing identity work all along.
There’s a reason matcha’s green is part of its marketing without anyone saying so. Green is culturally coded as calming, natural and clean, the opposite of the harsh black of espresso or the artificial orange of energy drinks. In a feed full of anxiety-inducing content, a soft green drink functions almost like a visual exhale. You don’t need a psychology degree to feel the difference between a photo of a double espresso and a photo of a pastel green latte with foam art. One looks like hustle. The other looks like healing.
In the temple town of Srikalahasti, on the banks of the Swarnamukhi river in present-day… Read More
Look at old photographs and the complaint is almost universal. Our mothers had thicker hair.… Read More
There are places women disappear to that don't appear on any bucket list. A café… Read More
Your thirties have a funny way of changing your relationship with shopping. At 25, buying… Read More
Things That Make Your Home Look Cheap A home doesn't need expensive furniture, marble floors… Read More
A few years ago, a walk was just a walk. Now it has a name,… Read More
This website uses cookies.