Meet The Woman Helping Bollywood Have Better Sex

Brut India

Aastha Khanna's job is to make sure there is nothing awkward about shooting intimate scenes on screen. Khanna, India's first certified intimacy coordinator, spoke to Brut about her work and how she makes the magic happen.

Transcript

00:00Oh, I have so many things.

00:30An intimacy coordinator is somebody who has to at all points of time remember that they

00:38are hired by the production to make sure that the director's vision is realized.

00:45You bring solutions, you bring different ideas to the table that will sort of relay the same

00:50story but will also make sure that we're not flouting anybody's boundaries.

01:11I usually try and draw a parallel between a dance choreographer because in India people

01:19understand what a choreographer does for music very easily and an intimacy coordinator. The

01:26idea is that somebody is choreographing a scene beat by beat and making sure that

01:33you're getting your steps right and essentially just doing it in a sort of rehearsed fashion.

01:52I have something really cool. This is called a crotch pouch. So basically what happens is

01:59somebody who is male assigned at birth can put their genitalia inside it. It basically

02:08holds the genital area so you can use it in case of any kind of nudity. You can just

02:16keep the genital area covered and so the sides and the bum can then come on screen.

02:23Another thing that we use is a pilates ball. So this is not entirely inflated. The idea is to

02:30sort of make sure that there is a barrier between genitals when we're doing any kind of intimate

02:36simulated sex scene that involves any form of thrusting because genitals cannot touch.

02:42So we have something called rabbit pasties. The idea is that these pasties go on the nipples

02:48and then you can use the rabbit part of the adhesive,

02:52the ears, to sort of pull it up to give it a little bit of a push up.

03:09So in the west there is this concept of riders which is that your contract will have an extra

03:15sheet in it which is clear to be an intimacy or a nudity rider as they like to call them.

03:23So that consent is specific and is clear. In India, however, a lot of times what happens

03:30is actor's contracts are made after the film's been shot. A lot of times what happens is there

03:35is verbal consent between actor and director and actor and producer which then either one

03:43can back out on and then it becomes a he says, she says sort of scenario. A lot of bigger actors

03:50still refuse to sign a rider because they're like, oh I don't need to. It's an unorganized industry.

04:04These are actors that have some form of social capital attached to each other but they're

04:09known to each other in the social circle which is very common in India.

04:13It's like a huge family. So when social capital is attached a lot of times intimacy

04:17can get extremely embarrassing and also extremely nerve-wracking.

04:30I think it's so important that this exists in India and I feel like it's really going to

04:36take on because I feel like India in all of its different film industries has sort of

04:42been working towards making, I mean especially since the Me Too movement, they've been working

04:47really hard in making sort of the film set an extremely safe space. They should never feel

04:54like they've not been given a chance to say no. I always say consent is a yes only when

05:02you have an equal chance to say no.

05:19What we can do is make more evolved stories that are using intimacy in a non-scandalous

05:26way because intimacy is such an important part of the human experience.

05:32you

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