Heidi Fleiss and Shahrukh Khan – Spot the Difference!

Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss is opening a ’stud farm’ in the Nevada desert - offering male prostitutes for female customers.

Shahrukh Khan has referred to his superficial film Paheli, that has been rejected as a nominated entry by the Oscars, as being a portrayal of the

emancipation of women.

Both sound like battery-less dildos. Neither of them knows what women want and what women are.

Shahrukh’s thinking is seriously flawed concerning the subject and cinematic treatment.

In brief: A young woman in a Rajasthani village gets married. Her husband is a typical bania-type obedient son immersed in calculating money. Without consummating the marriage, he goes off on some work to another village leaving his new wife. A ghost who has noticed her while she was on her way to the groom’s house appears before her, transforms into the avatar of her husband and they satisfy their urges.

They? When the woman rebukes him, the man is shown not only in charge of thawing her but also deciding what her needs are.

Female sexuality, inclusive of desires and realisation, is extremely vital and projecting it is indeed important. Yet, most of these ‘feminist’ films are seen through the male prism (even when made by a woman, as was the case with Rihaee by Aruna Raje).

The most memorable moments in such cinema are more often than not a paean to the male’s pajama strings -- their cravings, their peeves, their anger, their conquests that are guised as new age sensitivity.

Here too, the ghost filled with lust from the moment he sets eyes on her pursues her like a predator. On discovering that she is now without a man around, he moves towards the kill. The woman ‘submits’ to the apparition only when he transforms into a look-alike of her husband.

Several points can be made here. If this film was about women’s emancipation, then…

Why is her sexuality offered on a platter to a stranger?

(Because it is assumed she has no choice.)

Why is she shown like a guttersnipe doing it on the sly?

(Because such a woman is not acceptable, not only to society but in some ways to herself.)

Why does she accept a ghost?

(Because he is invisible and dead. At a symbolic level, one could conjecture that his past will become her past and not hinder her future. A ghost, being formless, can also stand for a fantasy. A real man would completely shake the structure.)

Why does he not take on the appearance of any good-looking man and prefer to look like her husband when her marriage was arranged and she has barely seen much of him?

(Because a woman’s lust has to be legitimised and ‘dignified’. She may perform a rain dance and get humped on the terrace, but her mangalsutra must brand her neck; it is a strangulating reminder that she is chained.)

Interestingly, the film is based on a folklore set in a village – the message being given is that we are essentially talking about a backward people, just like tribals with no real laws. The sutradhars who weave the narrative and act as spokespersons are metaphorically – and tellingly – two puppets.

Who is pulling the strings?

Is freedom really about release from want or for it?

Heidi Fleiss says, “I am opening up a stud farm. I am going to have the sexiest men on earth. Women are going to love it.”

Will a male brothel empower women? Fleiss was known as the notorious madam in Hollywood for supplying women. One should therefore consider her an exploiter. She insists that she never recruited a single girl in her life: “They found me. They beat down my door. You would be surprised how many people wanted to work for me, whether it is a fantasy or not, they all wanted to work for me.”

One definition of prostitution is the giving of sexual favours in exchange for economic advantage or physical protection.

In fact, a theory says that the genesis of whoredom goes back to the baboons when the female thrust her delectable red behind in the face of the male who completely forgot all about the carcass that lay at his feet, leaving her to savour the meal while he devoured her.

According to this premise, prostitution is a developed institution where the female gold-digger and the wife who, after a quarrel, runs her hand up her husband’s thighs come up high in the evolutionary ladder.

Do men and women pay the same price for pleasure?

Money ensures ownership and anonymity. A crisp note has no emotions attached to it. Suddenly, middle class men who carry their morals on their zippers are game for anything, simply because money has changed hands. Even a ten-buck roll behind a filthy curtain gives them the privilege of being king.

Now, we come to two moot points regarding a male brothel:

1. Would the men get physical and economic protection?
2. Can women truly engage in sex without emotions?

Heidi’s clients will shell out $250 an hour; from what I read the recruits may have different professions and this would be moonlighting for them. Would they be as committed? Would they not end up with that slightly nose-in the-air attitude of doing women a service rather than servicing women?

Why does Heidi herself have different standards? She calls this a “stud farm” whereas in her earlier operation with women she had more stringent conditions: “I looked for 10s with 10 personalities. But I know what men want. If two girls come to you, and one is a 10, but she feels that you are lucky to be with her... who wants that? The other might only be a 7, but she will make you feel like a 10. A girl who will have a shot of tequila with you and show you a great time.”

Will these men in a Nevada brothel, which will incidentally have a Hollywood look, be as considerate?

This brings me to the second point about emotional attachment. Say, a woman, lonely and tired after a hard day’s work, makes her way to the brothel. She finds a guy who is nice, a great lover with an engaging personality who makes her feel special. What do you think will happen?

The woman a man seeks respite from is a forgotten face. That is why men pay for sex. They do not want to remember. Women remember. This is where Heidi has erred. She says, “Women are more independent these days; they make more money and it’s hard to meet people. I mean, relationships are harder than dieting, you know what I mean?"

Yeah, we know what you mean and that is the darn problem -- equating male prostitution with ‘relationships’. There will most certainly be a few women who will use this channel to satiate their curiosity amidst the waterfalls and palm trees. But many more women’s wet dream is to spend 250 dollars in a chocolate spa or on some impulsive shopping.

Also, why does it have to be commercial sex? Are we being told that women cannot have flings? Do all men with moolah end up in brothels? No. They have one-night stands, or find arm candies, or have no-strings-attached liaisons. Can women not initiate such relationships?

Besides, I find the contention of Heidi’s partner so pat and cocky. He stated, “Say a guy gets into an argument with his wife. What does he do? Lot of times, he goes out, gets a drink, goes to a place to be serviced. Now women can say, ’Hey, if you can do it, I can too’.” Whoever said that women’s independence was about cloning men?

Female sexuality is not a big bang theory. Yet, one cannot have different standards in a pay-for-pleasure situation. It is a transaction. Therefore, if a male client is expected to ‘finish off’, give the money and scoot, one cannot expect a situation where the female client demands multiple orgasms within an hour. Because her ‘servicer’ is a male with physical limitations.

There could be other related aspects. We must not forget that if Heidi plans to run her bordello the way she conducted her women-on-call operation, then the risk of losing privacy is there. She exposed the movie moguls and business tycoons. How would she deal with the identities of the women clients?

In most societies, men get away with their diversions, women cannot. Even in Divine Brown’s case, the whore had to go into hiding for doing her legitimate business whereas the ‘victim’, actor Hugh Grant, got away with a fake apology and some embarrassment. In fact, he got celebrated as a bumbling gentleman- idiot.

Why canonise the clit?

Are celibates necessarily not liberated? Are they intellectual/emotional zombies? Why is the abstinence practised by men seen as a virtue and that of women as pathetic self-denial?

It is unfortunate that contemporary mores make it incumbent on us to take a ‘moral’ position on sex. The minute our guilt-addled minds make us say, “This is not wrong”, we are assuming something else has been sanctified and fossilised as ‘right’. Women who would have ordinarily gone through the business of finding their own version of contentment are now put in a G-spot.

It has now become our overarching ambition to reveal liberalism through the libido. In India, there is a new film that claims to talk about emancipated urban life. Mixed Doubles deals with what the makers have called “wife-swapping”. There is nothing emancipated about such a term. If wives are swapped, then so are the husbands.

These are personal choices and one wishes that they were not marketed as path-breakers.

Gigolos, toy boys, masseurs, vibrators and even stone lingams at the shallow end of rivers in Indian villages have been put to use by women.

This has less to do with revolution and more to do with instincts.

If the idea is merely to make a point of giving it to those men, then every day in some part of the world several women are cauterising the male ego with just one question: Is it in?