OTT Taking Sex Seriously

Thanks to women content creators, new web series are beginning to talk frankly about female sexuality. It's empowering for women viewers and an education for others

- Suhani Singh

IN 2020, DURING THE LOCKDOWN, filmmaker Sonam Nair had an epiphany. The then 35-year-old realised it was time to freeze her eggs. “People feel it is like giving up on getting married or having a partner, but it isn’t so,” she says. “I remember I was the only single woman at the clinic. I felt empowered and proud after making the payment.”

When looking for a storyline for season two of the Netflix series Masaba Masaba, Nair thought egg freezing would be apt for the show’s urban, progressive spirit and its leading ladies—the mother-daughter duo of Neena Gupta and Masaba. Masaba Masaba is not shy of using “PQ”, short for “p**** quiver”, to describe how a woman feels when she sees a desirable man. “For long, we have heard airy-fairy terms like ‘dil pighal gaya’ or ‘saansein ruk gayin’,” says Nair. “PQ is a physical reaction women experience.”

As more and more women-centric shows like Masaba Masaba drop on streaming platforms, creators are boldly depicting content that may attract furore on the big screen. Like the masturbation scene in Veere Di Wedding. But with the popularity of shows like Sex Education (Netflix), which enlighten viewers on sexual identities, or the fact that the Indian OTT subscriber has access to US series like The Sex Lives of College Girls (Amazon Prime), which casts a female gaze at sexual pleasure, Indian producers feel they too can weave in relevant sexual information into their narratives.