Erotic Capital and the Boom of Chennai Massage Parlors

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Erotic Capital and the Boom of Chennai Massage Parlors

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Erotic capital refers to the social construction of a woman or a group based on their ability to evoke sexual interest and sexual attractiveness (Montemurro & Hughes, 2024). The social construction of erotic capital as a distinct body imagery asset that evokes sensuality and sexual interest is largely exploited by the capitalist exotic massage service industry. Exotic massage service industries operate based on the neo-liberal interests of the ever-growing market economy. Neo-liberalism explains the growth of the exotic massage service industries in both global North and global South. 

From a sociological understanding of pleasure, understanding pleasure invokes contextualizing pleasure as a means to self-exploration, mediating and negotiating human social experiences and social communication. The need for pleasure drives both men and women to become conspicuous consumers of such exotic services and the exotic massage service industries utilize the need for pleasure of the human society to erect hidden sexual markets for transactional, consensual, economically rational sexual activity. 

From a systemic perspective, the variables of ‘time’ and ‘space’ as determinants are taken into consideration to understand how these two variables interplay with each other in the maintenance of such hidden sexual markets for neo-liberal endeavours.Illegal boom of transactional sex in massage parlours  is an indicator of the emergent contemporary forms of deviance. The lack of systemic regulations and the overt impact of structural malaise has led to the menace of illegal transactional sex in these exotic industries.

Catherine Hakim’s erotic capital has seven distinct elements making it a multi-faceted concept. The erotic power emanates from beauty, being a distinctive element of erotic capital with cultural variants. Sexual attractiveness is based on the physical construction of a ‘sexy,’ ‘voluptuous’ and ‘macho’ bodies of both men and women (Hakim, 2015). Hakim’s conceptualization revolves around both men and women. Extending from Hakim’s conceptualization, I posit the view that all bodies, men, women and gender diverse categories require attention for generating an innate sexual charm and sexual energy to embark on the agreed upon social interaction that can be a flirtatious interaction to make people like them most often acceptable in many cultures.

However, moral ideological precepts have also been a constraining ‘social’ factor in defining women’s use of their erotic capital in various contexts (Hakim, 2010). The other elements encompass social presentation styles namely style of dress and hair styles that have the capacity to evoke sexual attractiveness and sexual magnetism inherently within oneself and also facilitates and establishes a social interaction with others. Liveliness is an indicator of physical charm and energy and sexuality is a dominant indicator of erotic capital manifested through erotic imagination, erotic playfulness and erotic demeanour. 

According to Hakim, erotic capital is a requisite for everyone in all occupations, a proposition that has been subjected to critical reviews, I situate that this conceptualization is very relevant for this study on sex work in massage parlors primarily because all elements of erotic capital is commodified in sex work in massage service industry. This becomes a critical factor for the work dynamic of massage service industries as these industries bank on women’s ability to eroticize with their clients and is a stark reflection of this hidden market’s stability for maximizing profit. 

Hakim’s conceptualization of erotic capital is ‘elitist’ as the notion of ‘erotic power’ and its ‘utility’ in all occupations is worthy of critical Feminist discourse. Viewing the social construction of ‘erotic power’ in the massage service industries expressed by the female masseuse, the construction of ‘erotic power’ is forced labour shifting the paradigm to how this forced erotic power creates subversion of female bodies for fulfilling the sexualized male gaze and overt sexual desires of men. The process of creating subversion of female bodies in  the massage service industry can be invoked through the lens of erotic capital of Hakim. Hakim’s ‘erotic capital’ to a greater extent reinforces traditional patriarchy, which is a characteristic dynamic in the emerging erotic spa industries of the world.

The Massage Service Industry as a Neo-Liberal Sexual Market in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Post-globalization and the increased internet penetration has resulted in a new surge of massage parlors in Chennai city in Tamil Nadu, India. Sex brothels started to function with illicit activities such as flesh trade, erotic massages and immoral activities under the garb of massage parlors in the city of Chennai. The Immoral Trafficking and Prevention Act, 1956 aims to curb sexual exploitation of women for commercial purposes. In a detailed news report by The Times of India in an article titled, “Chennai’s Cops put the squeeze on” published in November 202, parlors, health clubs and spas are required to get licensed from Greater Chennai corporation and No Objection Certificates (NOC) from the Police and Health Departments of the city of Chennai (Times of India, 2021). News articles in regional and national dailies have documented a steep increase in massage parlors that illegally engage in sex work since 2017. According to a news report by The Hindu, published in February 2017, the Anti-Vice Squad (AVS) of city Police busted the sex racket in a spa centre where 12 women were exploited into flesh trade in Chennai. Another article published in The Hindu, in June 2023, reported another sex racket that was operating under the guise of massage parlor in Royapettah, Chennai. In May 2025, The Hindu reported that around seven women were rescued from sex work on Greams Road where a spa was functioning and women were forcibly exploited into sex trade. These news articles show how Chennai has increasingly grown into a ‘hidden neo-liberal sexual market’ commodifying women’s bodies through capitalizing on the erotic male gaze and erotic desires of men.

Global discourses on sex work in massage parlours as ‘body work’ or ‘body rubs’ aimed to perpetuate ‘sex work’ in massage service industry by highlighting the distinct symbiotic relationship between sex trade and neo-liberalism. Tracing the discourses on global sex industry, Jeffreys (1997) raises pertinent and compelling question on the legitimization of the global sex industry as leisure industry because women become ‘men’s leisure’ in the sex industry. Sex work in India occupies only a semi-legal status (Patnaik, 2023). The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, also known as Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act, 1986 prohibits operation of brothels, trafficking and pimping as illicit activities and punishable offences (Baruah & Pathak, 2024). Cross-gender massages in India is a punishable offense if the spas operate without license and are involved in illicit activities. Several news articles reported in the newspapers between the period 2020 to 2025 discusses the boom of massage parlors in the city of Chennai that engage in illicit activities such as ‘flesh trade,’ from ‘hand jobs’ to ‘happy endings’ and to the ‘glory holes,’ the inside stories of a spa, wellness centre posing to be  therapeutic is a deception indeed. These operations of sex work in massage parlous show the dialogic interaction between the sexual imagination of men and the sexual subjectification of women in these ‘hidden neo-liberal sexual markets.’ 

I situate the massage parlors in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India as a ‘neo-liberal sexual market’ that capitalize on the erotic capital of women sex workers and on the erotic desires of men. Sex workers engage in hypersexualization in order to maintain a supply of clientele in the massage parlours thereby making the sexual transaction a performance akin to ‘veritability of real labour’ observed in labour market dynamics. It is crucial to note the spa industry is positioned largely as a wellness industry and the women workers in the spa industry most often experience sexual commodification of their bodies.

Sex Work in Massage Parlors: Sexual Capitalization and Sexual Subjectification

Sex work in massage parlors can be situated as a dialectic interaction between sexual capitalization and sexual subjectification. Sexual capitalization refers to the process of capitalization of female sexuality and their bodies creating subverted identities for economic profit. The sexualization of women’s bodies in the labour performance involves an overt control of their own bodies, manipulating other’s bodies, eroticizing their bodily experience and work on other’s bodies, bodies as sites of pleasure, bodies as sites of violence and bodies as instruments of erotic appeal. These social ramifications often involve the notion that body work is constructed as sexual imagery; as erotica; as ‘sexualized labour’ which is antithetical to professional labour (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Tracy and Scott, 2006). The exploration of femininity in sexualized labour invokes erotic sensuality to meet the demands of the massage service industry positioned as a ‘neo-liberal hidden sexual market’. 

A nuanced and a critical exploration of femininity in sexualized labour performance in the massage service industry requires an intricate analysis, as several questions can be posed to understand how the contemporary dimensions of labour such as emotions and sexual eroticism can be posited as an intimate encounter or a professional disposition? 

If it’s a professional disposition, the analysis involves a nuanced interpretation of the overt control of women’s bodies; the female masseuse’ body work on other men’s bodies; the social disorganization created by sex work in massage service industries; massage services in global sex tourism and the camouflaging of sexual labour with embodied expressions of the female masseuse in the bodily interactions with men clientele; the position of female masseuse as a ‘subject’ and the bodies of the female masseuse as ‘capital’ shows how sex workers in the massage service industry act as interstices between sexualization and commodification and as a stratum for the maintenance of the neo-liberal hidden sexual market.

Do we Need An Alternate Paradigm? 

Sex work as ‘deviance’ and sex work as ‘labour’ is a long-standing discourse; the sexualized labour in today’s liquid modernity ranges from physical intercourse to titillation. Titillation involves sexual interactions online through a digital interface that involves pornography,  strip-dancing, lap-dancing, telephone sex and live webcam sex (Weitzer, 2009). Zygmunt Bauman, the proponent of liquid modernity, captures the essence of individual and society in contemporary post-modern societies. Solidity and liquidity characterize the modern and post-modern societies (Palese, 2013). Liquidity in today’s society indicates the transient nature of contemporary existence defined by short-term and immediate gratification (Palese, 2013).

The physical bodies, the physicality and the process of becoming a ‘subject’ in this transactional sexual interaction are the three core dimensions that erect the massage service industry as a highly capitalist market that operates to meet the neo-liberal economic trends. The physical bodies refer to the female bodies, the physical attributes encompassing the bodily features of a woman such as looks, curves, sensuality and bodily appeal refers to the physicality and the process in which female masseuse  in the massage service industries are forced to engage in transactional sex for achieving rational economic ends for these disguised wellness centers or ’sex’ dens indicates ‘sexual subjectification’ in the backdrop of growing neo-liberalism. The female masseuse trained to ask the client for a happy ending with a smile on observing the visible sexual stimulation of men is a capitalist tactic of creating ‘passivity’ and ‘docility’ among female masseuses.

The dimensions of labour manifested in this nature of work is sexual labour, emotional labour and aesthetic labour in sexualized forms creating subversion of female masseuses forced in sex work in the ‘so called’ disguised wellness centers. Could viewing the ‘sexualized labour’ of Indian female masseuse forced into sex work from the lens of ‘healing labour’ revealed by Gabriel Koch in the Japanese spa industry provide an alternate paradigm? Japanese sex workers view sex work as ‘healing labour’ as a form of labour expenditure that heals the hardworking men. Gabriel Koch, presents a very positive imagery of female sex workers in the Japanese sex industry who undergo sexual subversion and socio-economic marginalization. Healing labour becomes antithetical to erotic capital of female masseuse capitalized in the Indian spa industry, a dialectic in liquid modernity that requires a critical analysis. However, this alternate paradigm posits an ‘agential self’ of the female masseuse forced in sex work in spa industries steadily moving away from the ‘victimhood’ created in these neo-liberal hidden sexual markets in Chennai. 

Conclusion

Sex Work  in Massage Parlors, Liquid Modernity and Policing by the State: A Complex Conundrum

Zygmunt Bauman (2003) conceptualized liquid love as consumer-oriented emerging from increasing unregulated individualism. In Bauman’s liquefaction thesis, sexuality is a private aspect unregulated by the state. Bauman’s interpretation of liquid love, sexuality, sexual relationships and eroticism has taken its own course disengaged from moral binaries. According to Bauman, eroticism is a seductive resource and desires in liquid modernity are defined by the fulfillment of gratifying orgasms that are based on the sole need to engage in sexual activities. Sex, sexuality and sexual practices from the lens of Bauman’s liquid modernity is a ‘consumerist discourse.’ Men’s immediate urge for sexual stimulation and sexual gratification in contemporary liquid modernity justifies the boom of ‘body work’ in massage parlors in the city of Chennai.

Aligning with Bauman’s “impatience complex” referring to the immediate and instant gratification mediated through digital interfaces such as ordering a pizza, the boom of ‘body work’ in massage parlours is an outcome of impatience complex. Sexual pleasures are commodified, bought and sold in the spa industries that capitalize on erotic appeal of the female masseuses. The increasing consumerist behaviour in metro cities today is grossly manifested in the sexual sphere that involves flirtatious interactions, one-night stands, digital sexting, online sex and happy endings in massage parlours.

Bauman (2003) conceptualizes this variety in sexual behaviors severed from morality and ethics as ‘adiaphorization’ (Best, 2018). Female masseuses are trapped into sexual commodification and male clients trade their sexual fantasies and desires in these neo-liberal hidden sexual markets for instant gratification. The state’s move away from the position of a  ‘panopticon’ in the sexual sphere of its citizens primarily to meet the neo-liberal interests of wealth generation in a neo-liberal economy could be the reason for such proliferation of ‘body work’ in massage parlors.

Could state surveillance positively regulate sexual behaviors in liquid modernity? Would moral policing the sex lives of its citizens curb sexual liberation or is adiaphorization merely disguised as sexual liberation in liquid modernity?  

The lack of rigid and frequent policing of massage parlors in the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India could indicate the state’s non-interference in the growing neo-liberalism where touch is monetized and vagaries of sexual desires are capitalized for profit. Against this backdrop, the state’s surveillance is essential to regulate the sex lives of its citizens either by legitimizing ‘body work’ as ‘real work’ to protect the bodily agency of the female masseuses trapped in sex work in these disguised spa centers or regulate the operations of massage parlors to curb sex work through comprehensive guidelines for establishing spas, resorts and wellness centers.

An alternative approach to limiting adiaphorization may involve criminalization of erotic sexual demands of the clientele such as happy endings and glory holes. Would liquid moderns and sexual liberals deem this intervention as an infringement of their sexual rights in the sexual sphere by the state? 

References

Maria Aishwarya B

Maria Aishwarya B is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Stella Maris College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India as well as a PhD Research Scholar in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at CHRIST University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India She has published research papers in international journals. Her areas of research interests are women and marginality, women and work, gender and organizations, women and religion. She is working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Stella Maris College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.