The Currency Of Sex

Anand Jon, fashion designer, is found guilty on eight charges of rape and sexual assault on a minor girl, and is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail. To me, there's hardly anything sensational about anything in the above sentence, except for the number eight. Does it really take eight charges of rape to bring a rapist to justice? It would be interesting to study why it took this long in this case, wouldn't it?

The fashion world, just like the world of cinema and showbusiness, offers plenty of opportunity for naive, impressionable young people to be lured into a dreamworld of glamour, success, fame and luxury by doing things that seem fairly easy on the body and very easy on the mind. So, the currency that automatically becomes the differentiator is often sex. The casting couch is by no means a figment of imagination, and many young people are propositioned nicely enough to take it or leave it for the next struggle to get a shot at the limelight.

Many youngsters choose the casting couch in the same vein of thought that brought them to it in the first place - easy success. So, it is no big deal to have sex with someone who can potentially promise you a big bonus in return. This is prostitution, except that the prostitute has a choice attached to something that is important to him or her. Most youngsters can walk away from having to make this choice, but their egos will hurt even more with failure than with having unwilling sex. So, the claim is that there isn't much choice, but the real choice is between paying a price using the currency of sex, or having to stick to your virtuous ways and struggling some more. More often than not, it is stupidity that leads young minds to make wrong choices, and it is no different here.

Stupidity lends credibility to the fact that this particular success is the only shot that person will get, and that it is somehow important to choose. Making it look like a choice between success and failure is the dark talent of the crooks who have the power to control the careers of these young people. Even darker is the talent to sell the world the idea that fashion and glamour are somehow important artistic endeavors that have some meaning in the real world. The world that consumes glamour in any form is equally guilty of creating the atmosphere in which crimes like this can take place.

But the law is myopic enough to allow the vast majority to consume and pour money into a sham industry, while the few who rise to prominence have the power to exploit. This is no different from any other industry, but the big difference is that there are goods and services that are essential to us so we can't shy away from buying a shoe knowing fully well that it might be made with child labour, but we can certainly shy away from attending that pathetic fashion show where young men and women strut uncreative clothing and jewellery and what not and actually imagine they have a career ahead of them.

If it takes eight charges of rape to bring down one of these shenanigans, it is because it dawned on quite a few of them rather late, that they gave what was asked and they still don't have careers! All of a sudden, they realized they have been had, and decided to make a case of it. If they had soared to fame, it would have all been hunky dory. For heavens' sake, it really isn't that hard to figure this out, is it? So, this is really a case of the sore losers trying to get something back for having been stupid in the first place.

It is no news that the promise of easy sex attracts a lot of people to the world of show business. That is hardly to taint the efforts of those genuinely attracted to the art and craft and various other serious pursuits in these industries, but fact remains that physical proximity and the need to please certain people can put people in rather awkward situations. We can almost certainly trust a seventeen year old who has put in a year of effort to get to that point to feel as if he or she has invested a lifetime for this "moment" and feel that it would be stupid to let go of the "opportunity" that beckons. It is like entering a threshold to something special, a portal to climb above all peers, an escape from the drudgery and a shot at the "real" thing, whatever that may be.

The power of sex as a currency is never to be underestimated. It is often used by two kinds of people - those with low self esteem, and those with a shortage of every other currency - intellect included. There is absolutely nothing to prevent our young men and women to call in the press and bring down the house on a pervert pretending to be an artist of immense capabilities who can launch careers. But that is not the kind of fighting spirit that brings them to these positions in the first place. They are used to grovelling and begging and pleasing in order to have that one shot at success. Such people will almost never complain. So, it takes eight failures and probably eight fools waking up to reality that they have no careers in fashion to complain against someone of this "stature".

There's another reason for this easy prey phenomenon. Parents of the so called victims. They want bragging rights and want their children to reach for fame that usually evaded them. So, they do whatever it takes to push their children towards stardom of some kind. There are some who are actually stupid enough to tell their kids they can choose to sing and dance on TV but not get into films because the world of films is "bad"! But behind most of this absurd behaviour is the confusion with material goals. Most parents get a little desperate wondering how to get their children to a future that is secure and abundant, and are actually willing to pay a price for getting there a bit quicker than other parent-child teams might.

The currency of sex has been used for centuries. It will continue to be used for centuries, and one example of bringing a guilty person to justice is hardly going to make a dent in a phenomenon that is well heeled, copiously nurtured, hardly spoken about, and completely accepted as normal. Given the opportunity to be sexually predatory, it can be either a fashion designer, film producer or a pastor, and chances are that person will choose to be an animal, especially when the consequences are not likely to be harmful in the slightest way.