The first Indian woman to pose naked for Playboy magazine says she is proud to have “pushed the envelope” in a country where public nudity in any form remains largely taboo.
Minor Bollywood actress Sherlyn Chopra, 28, will feature in a nude spread in the November issue of the magazine, although her Indian fans will be hard pushed to get hold of a copy.
Playboy, along with a host of other foreign “adult” magazines, is banned in India, which has strict obscenity laws proscribing any public act or published material deemed to be “lascivious or appealing to prurient interests.”
Photo: AFP
News that Chopra had become India’s first “Playmate” caused quite a stir, fueled by Chopra herself posting nude out-take pictures from the Playboy shoot on the microblogging site Twitter.
As well as some inevitably lascivious and prurient responses, many Indian Twitter users criticized her decision and accused her of a desperate publicity stunt to further her acting career. She had written to Playboy herself expressing an interest in posing.
In an e-mail interview, Chopra dismissed her critics and said she considered herself a pioneer for sexual freedom in India.
“I had no apprehensions and have no regrets: just feelings of pure liberation and sheer excitement,” she said of the Playboy shoot in Los Angeles.
“I’m proud to have pushed the envelope and I will not hesitate to lead my life on my terms consistently,” she said.
Chopra’s Bollywood career to date has been decidedly B-list, with bit roles in less than a dozen movies, including the 2003 box-office dud Dosti (Friendship) and a film titled Naughty Boy.
Her labelling as a “Bollywood legend” on the Playboy Web site was widely mocked in India, and Chopra admitted it was a “surreal” tag.
Indian writers, actors and artists who have sought to push the boundaries of traditional Indian morals have sometimes found themselves targeted by conservative religious groups, but Chopra appeared unworried at the prospect of a backlash.
“The moral guardians have never done any real good to me or the society at large,” she said. “So let them do whatever they are good at while I do what I truly enjoy.”
The publicity generated by Chopra’s shoot has been overshadowed in recent days by the release of what has been billed as one of India’s raunchiest mainstream movies, Jism 2 (Body 2).
Adult film star Sunny Leone plays a porn actress in the movie, which has stirred controversy with its provocative publicity material and content.
The mayor of Mumbai, Sunil Prabhu, ordered the removal of promotional posters for the film from public buses in India’s entertainment capital after a local legislator complained the image used was obscene.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS