Sex trade and middle-class hypocrisy

In the midst of the ongoing debate on legalising sex trade in India, The Independent carried an article on a woman in the US opening a shop called Cuddle Up To Me, which received 10,000 email enquiries in its first week of operations.

For about $60 an hour, clients can have themselves hugged, hold hands, have their hair stroked and get cuddled in many different ways by professional cuddler Samantha Hess, the brains behind the enterprise.

The comments below the news highlighted a multitude of angles to the phenomenon, including a society that craves cuddles, even for cash. And they raised questions about the thin red line between non-sexual, feel-good human contact and genuine intimacy.

This also reflects a need to revaluate the notion of basic human instincts, which are now subject to market forces prevalent in a highly consumerist economy like, say, India.

Soon, one may also find adverts of life-sized humanoid cuddle pillows and sex dolls. How else do you explain high profile e-tailer Flipkart’s entry to the sexual wellness products market, once considered taboo and still contentious in the eyes of lawmakers and even the general public?

It is a grave concern that the topic of sex can never be breached in India without ruffling a few feathers.

Legally recognising the existence of sex workers might be a tall order in our country, which is home to a culture of repression.

A big chunk of the populace prefer to ignore the fates of those earning their livelihoods through sex work. As far as they are concerned, such workers could very well go on with their lives, only in the darkness of alleyways on the fringes of society. Our hypocrisy can be breathtaking. Primetime entertainment collapses ever so easily into suggestions of sleaze, but that’s kosher. We can salivate at the stars on display and yet have our veneer of respectability intact.

Sample this: In 2011, popular reality show ‘Bigg Boss’ roped in Sunny Leone, an adult entertainment star of Indo-Canadian origin to achieve the TRP (television rating point) equivalent of a happy ending. Did the producers of the show do this by an error of judgment?

Not at all, for it was driven by the idea that Indian men in the target demographic of 18-35 years (give or take 5 to 10 years to adjust for precociousness or late blooming) are consumers of pornography and were familiar with one of the most well-known faces in that genre. The creators of the show allowed viewers to promote the show for themselves.

All they had to do was sit back and watch the advertisers queue up by the thousands.

While Leone cashed in on her enormous fan base, she might have also helped a new generation of viewers embrace adult entertainment.

Of course, a few people stepped out on to the streets to protest against porn stars from California’s infamous San Fernando Valley invading Indian living rooms during primetime.

Meanwhile school-goers, their parents and grandparents found themselves glued to the idiot box participating in an exercise that was nothing short of misery-fuelled voyeurism. Oddly enough, no moral sensibilities kicked in at that hour.

Juxtapose this with the news that the US reality TV star and hapless socialite Kim Kardashian — who unsuccessfully attempted to ‘Break the Internet’ with her artistically photo-shopped nudity — was slated to appear on an episode of ‘Bigg Boss’ (Kardashian later dropped the idea).

It seems like too much of a coincidence, doesn’t it? But as Grand Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda reminds Po, “There are no accidents.”

This is happening at a time when mature adult audiences walk into an A-rated film released on our shores to witness ‘problematic’ scenes (read intimate scenes) edited callously.

Conversely, when David Fincher’s Gone Girl was screened last month in a multiplex in Chennai, and the moment something would heat up on screen, the Censor Board would opt for the new and improved alternative to the scissors — a brilliantly inventive three-pronged approach of ‘pan and scan and zoom’ — which crops out the ‘action’ onscreen, forgive the pun.

Who or rather what are the forces at work here? Why will a film like ‘Happy New Year’ with all its purported misogyny get an international release and break box office records while a realistic and shattering examination of love and relationships like Abdellatif Kechiche’s French film Blue is the Warmest Color or Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight find only film festival slots in India?

Before the government thinks about tackling the sex trade issue, it needs to take a breather to focus on the real issues — that of perspectives.

As long as we pretend to be in denial, a cuddle shop in India would continue to be a decoy, like a massage parlour to nurture a cesspool of illicit activities.

Single men and women who will tentatively turn house hunters someday, will continue to put up with landlords for whom the ground rules are simple: only ‘decency’ to be maintained. No live in. No bachelors. No drinking. No partying. No members of the opposite sex.

Maybe, you need to start right at the beginning. Sex education imparted in schools needs to be a serious business, and not a snicker-inducing march to the biology lab with separate formations for boys and girls, who will in turn be administered by a Reproductive Sciences Nazi on the wisdom of ze birds and ze bees.