ABSTRACT
On a dull evening in 2014, a friend casually mentioned the launch of the Playboy Club in India. This was striking since the name has acquired a bad reputation from its first launch in the US in 1953. Playboy magazines have been iconic as gentlemen magazines known for their female nude spreads. The magazines are widely infamous for their erotic content and have been condemned for their representation of women and for ‘corrupting the minds of men’. They are illegal in India. The Playboy bunny who has become the brand’s symbol has frequently attracted the ire of feminist groups. She is the selling point of not only the magazine but also the club where attractive women are employed as hostesses after a process of training. They are dressed in a ‘bunny’ outfit with a tail and rabbit ears. The club’s launch and the employment of these hostesses directly contradicted the state’s extant position on obscenity and the employment of women as erotic labor. Unsurprisingly, this news was greeted with wide opposition from the protectors of culture and women, namely right-wing organizations and feminist organizations. This synthesis of the two otherwise opposed political forces forms the basis of this chapter. Further, the brand anticipating such opposition also reframed its public image to present themselves as a family-friendly club space. The chapter ruminates over the erasure of erotica as ‘un-Indian’ in supposedly opposed forces. This erasure surpasses the apparent dissimilarity or even opposition of these debating actors and establishes the nation-state as unprepared for or antithetical to public erotica.
