Pakistani Tea Seller Has Girls, Fame After Photo Goes Viral

Arshad Khan was offered his first modeling gig within days
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 19, 2016 6:59 PM CDT
Pakistani Tea Seller Has Girls, Fame After Photo Goes Viral
An 18-year-old tea seller in Pakistan has a modeling gig and Hollywood dreams after this photo went viral.   (Instagram)

In what should give hope to people toiling away at menial jobs everywhere (provided, of course, that they're extremely good looking), an 18-year-old Pakistani tea seller is the toast of the internet, a professional fashion model, and a Hollywood hopeful less than a week after someone put his photo online. The BBC reports wedding and event photographer Javeria Ali snapped some pics of Arshad Khan as he worked a tea stand in Islamabad. Last Friday, she posted one on Instagram with the winking caption "Hot-tea." Then the internet did its thing. By Monday, #ChaiWala (it means "tea seller") was the top trending topic on Pakistani Twitter, according to Quartz. The Express Tribune says the picture of Khan "gave all the ladies and men something to talk about."

Since then, Khan—who hadn't even heard of Twitter or Instagram—says dozens of women have visited him at his tea stand. "I am incredibly happy," he told a local TV station. He even has a new gig after a local online shopping site called Fitin hired him as a model. Now Khan is setting his sights on possibly getting into Hollywood. "I'm very happy for him," Ali tells the BBC. "He deserves this. He's a really nice kid." But has fame already stripped away what made Khan crush-worthy? Quartz notes he's now "clean-shaven, wearing a dapper two-piece suit, with hair gelled, a far cry from the rugged face, blue kameez, and unkempt mane that so enamored him to his online oglers." (He's an 18-year-old Mormon. He's also a supermodel.)

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