No kidding

BY Lalita Sridhar| IN Media Practice | 11/06/2002
No kidding

No kidding

 

Our coffee tables are now the easiest place to find what our children do not get in school - lessons in sex which are anything but an education.</synopsis>

 

By Lalitha Sridhar

Is there anything in our social structure that prepares our children for the sexually explicit messages they see in mainstream Indian media? With neither certificates nor censorship to temper access, our coffee tables are now the easiest place to find what our children do not get in school - lessons in sex which are anything but an education.

I am getting dinner ready in the kitchen and my 8 year old comes up to show me a picture in a magazine before she points out, "Look how fat she is, Amma." I look. My daughter is holding the page 108 of India Today`s February 11, 2002 issue. There is a 3 column spread of Malayalam films` "pinup girl of soft-porn land", striking a coy pose, showing a substantial breast behind a pallu pushed aside. A smaller picture at the bottom of the left page has "her plunging eight-inch cleavage - consequently, a good part of her bosom" (as described elsewhere in the text where she is also quoted as drawling, "People who mess with me can f#^* off."). All the skin on display is shining with oil and there is a man standing behind her shoulder with his hands splayed across all that substantial flesh. I wonder if the child would forget what she had seen as fast as I forgot what I was cooking.

The February issue of Cosmopolitan talks of a Love Fest which will help you "Discover Your H-Spot/Double Your Pleasure" besides a feature on lingerie titled "Underthings So Sultry, They`ll Make Him St-St-Stutter." The November 2001 issue exhorts you to "Sexify your look" and "Score Bombshell Status With Our Beauty Arsenal". And then, of course, you can "C`mon, Feel the Boys!" (caption for a feature on Hands-On Massage Techniques). GT`s inaugural issue had "A Three Timer`s Diary", "What Phone Sex Does To A Man". "Toned Butt Or Pretty Face, What Turns You On?" and still relentlessly, "Are You A Potential Gigolo?". In one issue of the Economic Times` glossy Chennai colour supplement, there was a snippet on Pamela Andersen Lee`s preference for anal intercourse and sex in an elevator - in so many explicit words.

Then there are the advertisements. "Tonight let it just be you and me. And nothing in between. Do it with Moods Luxury condoms. They are so thin that you can be skin to skin with each other. Until slowly...slowly...both of you reach sweet climax. Moods condoms - come together with confidence." An innocent come-hither from a woman who looks nude completes the picture - to be seen for the asking in ET`s colour supplements, as well as all newsmagazines including the normally staid The Week. It is a trend successfully set off by the sizzling Kama Sutra condom campaign - a bluntness which accosts the viewer in speedily measured seconds, sometimes not even long enough to reach for the remote. Sanitary pads are now advertised with a complete demonstration of how much fluid they can absorb, leaving parents to handle pre-tens with probing questions - the answers to which they are not ready for. No less damagingly, though in a different context, Pepsi and Provogue choose Fardeen Khan to promote their brand - the one thing he is more famous for than his flops is his arrest over cocaine possession.

The Alfred Dunhill fragrance called Desire has a woman, frontal view, apparently naked but as always leaving little - very little - to the imagination - looking longingly and yes, sexually. The copy reads "For a Man". Dark Unisex Parfum and Deo is advertised in leading glossies - coloured red and featuring the back of a shadowy nude woman on the floor, the copy reads, "In the dark, there are many secrets, waiting to be unravelled. In the dark, no questions are asked. In the dark, no answers are expected. In the dark, there is silence. And the irregular, riotous beat of two hearts." You are required to "Be yourself in the dark". Gucci`s Envy fragrance has a B&W picture straight out of something X-rated - faces up close, in the throes of passion, with the woman`s fingers prising open a man`s mouth, all the while looking at the camera wearing (apparently) nothing but

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The new term for self censorship is voluntary censorship, as proposed by companies like Netflix and Hotstar. ET reports that streaming video service Amazon Prime is opposing a move by its peers to adopt a voluntary censorship code in anticipation of the Indian government coming up with its own rules. Amazon is resisting because it fears that it may alienate paying subscribers.                   

Clearly, the run to the 2019 elections is on. A journalist received a call from someone saying they were from Aajtak channel and were conducting a survey, asking whom she was going to vote for in 2019. On being told that her vote was secret, the caller assumed she wasn't going to vote for 'Modiji'. The caller, a woman, also didn't identify herself. A month or two earlier the same journalist received a call, this time from a man, asking if she was going to vote for the BSP.                 

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