Playboy to open its first club in India

Adult entertainment company Playboy is set to open its first club in the land of kamasutra: India. Its iconic bunnies will not be in the nude but instead in the traditional six-yard sarees. The hot spot will set up shop at a popular beach in the resort state of Goa, which draws millions every year. 

Reuters/Steve Marcus/Files

The sprawling club will open just before Goa’s huge Christmas rush in Candolim beach. The property will be the first of its kind globally.

PB Lifestyle, the Indian firm with rights to the Playboy brand, will have 120 clubs and bars in 10 years in conservative India, were a quarter of its billion-plus population is now below 25 years of age.

Playboy and several other adult magazines are banned in India under its obscenity laws. Actress Sherlyn Chopra, the first Indian to pose naked for the magazine, told Bollywood Hungama network that it is time India celebrated sexuality.

“[Considering] the kind of mindsets that are evolving in India, the ban would most probably be lifted in the near future, and it should be,” said Chopra. “It makes no sense to ban an adult magazine. It’s not just an adult magazine, it’s the iconic adult magazine. It makes no sense to ban it while we continue to make erotic cinema and continue to endorse erotica on national television.”

Chopra, a celebrity now, will appear on the magazine’s November cover.

The Candolim Beach Playboy Club will be a tamer version of the original. This may even include women in demure saris.

“Bunnies are an integral part of Playboy clubs," Sanjay Gupta, chief executive of PB Lifestyle, told the AFP news agency. "For the obvious reasons of Indian morality and sensibilities, we can't follow the traditional costumes that Playboy bunnies are associated with."

Playboy bunnies are usually dressed in a corset with a fluffy rabbit tail and ears, an outfit which could prove a bit too much for conservative Indians to handle.

In any case, Gupta stressed that no nudity would be involved in the costumes.