When Sunny Leone says Bollywood is more sexist than porn industry

The line between sex and sexism may as wide as the Amazon River, but it remains invisible to most Indian men. And who better to display the cavalier attitude towards women, women’s bodies, sex, sexuality, and imbuing each of these with the thick odour of sexism, than Bollywood itself, the den of all things sex?

Sunny Leone, most searched, Google-ogled at, former porn-actor-turned-Bollywood-heroine-cum-item-girl, told the BBC that there’s more sexism in Bollywood than there is in the adult film industry.

Leone has been picked as one of the 100 most influential women of 2016 by BBC, and in an interview with the British media house, the actor was candid about what she thought was the difference between sex and sexism in India, particularly the Hindi film industry.

She said: "I was never questioned about who I was, about my sexuality, or my integrity as a woman. Sexism on sets? Not once. But people here have to compromise. I haven't. But it isn't the same here... people have to compromise on their integrity and it's a horrible feeling."

It couldn’t have been explained better.

That there is a rank difference between entrenched, everyday sexism, and representation of sex on-screen, whether explicit, or implicit, whether showing intercourse or not – is something that is lost on most of Bollywood, where people have to "compromise on their integrity" in order to bag assignments quite regularly.

"It's something that I created. I know what I am getting into. I know when I am hired, people want me to show off. They want the Sunny Leone shot. But that's the image I created, so I am okay with it."

Sunny Leone, even when talking about "objectification" of herself in Bollywood, has a stunning comeback.

"I don't think of objectification as a bad word. We objectify things, people, brands all the time. For me, it's selling the brand Sunny Leone," she told BBC.

In other words, as long as Leone herself is in control of Brand Leone, as long as the sexualisation of Sunny Leone is in consent of and without compromising that line called integrity of Sunny Leone, as long as Leone is calling the shots and is deciding the worth in hard currency of the Sunny Leone shot, it’s all well and good.

It is only when the hypocrisy kicks in – and Bollywood, in fact the whole of India, has hypocrisy as the default setting – that it becomes a big problem for Leone, and indeed every thinking, forthright, intelligent woman in and outside the industry who has chosen the profession in which body, sexuality, and related aspects are prioritised.

Hence, the close-up of the heaving bosom, titillating though it is for the Indian male, and indeed the revenue generator for the filmmaker and producer, is something Sunny Leone is comfortable with, because she re-invented it. It is only when the double standards on the sets spring to surface, in between the shoots, the shots, in gaze of the co-actors and crew and the financer, that the sexism, the unbearable objectification of Sunny Leone, takes the true and hideous shape.

Leone laughs at the often-proffered allegation that she’s "destroying Indian culture". Such neo-morality, the pungent mix of religious repressiveness, residual Victorian law, internet-facilitated voyeurism and the pervasive rape culture, is really claustrophobic for a sexual entrepreneur like Leone, who runs her SunLust Pictures, an adult entertainment company.

It is excruciating for many in Bollywood that Leone is in charge of her own destiny, that she’s not a nubile nymphet who can be preyed on, that her confident sexuality cannot be ravaged because she owns it, only pin-pricked by disgusting needles of sexism and hypocrisy.

What a shame.

Also read: We like our 'sex kittens' to be 'good girls' please

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