She’s unpretentious, fresh-faced and very middle class: the ubiquitous girl next door. She flaunts her body and knows her mind. And she’s more than ready to pose topless for the glossy pages of girlie magazines, with a candour hitherto unknown.

Meet the new entrants in the fast-growing market of pleasure: career-conscious but not camera-shy, these uninhibited twenty-somethings stimulate in solitude.

“This is just defiance. I basically want to become a top lawyer.” Anjali Kapur,24, Delhi-based high court lawyer in her robes; on the cover of Fantasy: a dare-all, bare-all attitude

They strip down to their barest essentials – whether pouting provocatively for the Debonair centre spread, or toying with lacy lingerie on the Chastity cover – without shame or fear. And quite unlike her predecessors, who posed for money and didn’t talk about it, today’s dare-all, bare-all model brazenly acknowledges her sexuality.

Till a decade ago, nude modelling carried the social stigma of being the exclusive preserve of sex workers. Says Arun K., a Bombay-based photographer, who specialises in nude photography: “In the ’80s, most pin-up models came from dubious backgrounds and lived relatively anonymous lives in paying guest accommodations.”

Easy money, in most cases, was the motive. J.P. Singhal, a painter and nude photographer in the business since 1958, agrees: “In the earlier days, most of these models came from emotionally distraught or economically weak backgrounds and hence found it much easier to flout convention.”

However, money is no longer a crucial concern. Despite the fact that pin-up models, like their counterparts on the ramp, have seen spectacular price hikes – an assignment with Debonair or Fantasy, the more established girlie magazines, may fetch anything between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, while the lesser known Chastity, Guys N’ Gals, BM Ads and Bombayite pay under Rs 5,000 now.

Interviews with a substantial numbed of these girls in Delhi and Bombay reveal that a majority of them aspire to a career in films, television serials or a high-profile stint in product modelling.

Curiously, the devil-may-care attitude stretches across the board. “We get calls from housewives, students, well-placed executives in the private sector and even parents of girls for centre-fold pictures,” says Ranjan Kar, who is the managing director of Fantasy.

“I’m basically a product model. Such assignments will get me attention.” Reshma Pardkar,22, with her mother; and posing for Fantasy: waiting for the big break

And they have pragmatic career plans clearly chalked out. “This is just a launching pad,” says Mitu Sahni, 21, an English literature student from Khalsa College, Delhi University. Sahni, an aspiring ramp model, has posed topless for both Chastity and Fantasy, and justifies her activities with her own logic: “If Mamta Kulkarni and Pooja Bhatt can do it, and nobody calls them loose, what is wrong with it?”

Delhi-based Anjali Kapur, 24, a high court lawyer by profession, belongs to a close-knit Punjabi family.

Petite and photogenic, Kapur dabbled in television and radio, till modelling assignments came her way. Having modelled for well-known brands like Monte Carlo, Amigo jeans, Network Computers and Disprin, Kapur did provocative cover poses for Debonair and Fantasy.

“It’s not a career move. I basically want to become a top lawyer,” she says. For Kapur, the need to expose stems from a desire to appear unconventional and to rebel against standard social norms.

In Bombay, 28-year-old Rajashree Chapvala, married to a Zaveri Bazaar jeweller and the mother of a four-year-old, lives with her conservative Maharashtrian in-laws in an up-market colony. After a short-lived stint in Marathi theatre, serials and occasional forays into modelling, Chapvala posed topless for Chastity and Fantasy.

“I don’t need the money. My husband is proud of my body and wants me to show it,” she says. Twenty-two-year-old Reshma Pardkar, a fashion designer, belongs to a well-heeled industrialist family in Bombay in which fashion is frowned upon.

A familiar face because of her Fair & Lovely, Chiragh Din and Slim Fast advertising campaigns, Pardkar tried her hand at nude modelling for the Fantasy anniversary issue. “I basically see myself as a product model. This assignment will definitely get me attention,” she says.

Considering the mass appeal and reach of the desi girlie magazines, such aspirations are not totally misplaced. The market, once the sole preserve of the demurely titled Debonair, is suddenly awash with bold and brassy contenders: Fun, Fantasy, Chastity, Playway, Lace Maker and Eternica. They’re exuberant, unabashed and doing well in the magazine bazaar.

“It is a move made for totally professional reasons. Why should there be any embarrassment?” Swati Fernandes,23, a fashion designer and professional model; and on the Debonair cover: defiant in the face of criticism and harassment

Voyeurism and economics, it appears, go hand in hand. While Debonair, which provides editorial matter of the now proverbial “redeeming social value” kind to counter-balance the breasts and buttocks that flesh out its pages, has registered a steady rise in circulation, from 30,000 copies to over a lakh in its two-decade history, other similar magazines are not far behind.

The brains behind the business, clearly, have their finger on the reader’s pulse. Other publishers, using the surefire strategy of ‘sex sells’, have hit the market with a surfeit of explicit magazines.

Till its recent legal imbroglio involving the publication of a minor’s nude photographs and its subsequent closure, Fantasy claimed monthly sales of over a lakh copies. Playway quotes sales figures of nearly 30,000 copies while the newer entrants aim at a circulation figure of about 50,000 in another six months.

Down to the brasstacks, the model-coordinator-photographer nexus operates in a free and fair manner. “Most models get in touch with the photographer directly, there is nothing clandestine in the dealings,” says Sagar, a model coordinator.

In a society that seems to be shedding inhibitions and embracing new mores, the desire to savour sex magazines is not entirely surprising. For, though the land of the Kamasutra produced no sexual showman to build a global empire of male fantasies, the recent boom in girlie magazines has swept narcissistic female aspirations out of conventional Indian homes.

A career move, an act of defiance, or simply the desire to be different: the impulse to shed clothes is triggered off by different reasons. Explains 21-year-old Nandini Guruv, a professional textile designer, who recently had her first solo exhibition of stylised fabric prints in Bombay: “Finally, it’s my life. If I feel good about my body, I will not be embarrassed about posing nude.” Guruv’s philosophy perfectly sums up the mood of these glamour-seekers: liberated, unashamed and brutally honest.

While photographers blame the Star TV and MTV onslaught for this new-found permissiveness, others seek answers in Indian cinema. Adds Rohit Sahu, a glamour photographer: “The ultimate justification for an aspiring model is, if Lisa Ray could do it for Gladrags, why can’t I?”

At 23, Bombay-based Shahnaz Patel has ambitious plans in the pipeline; nude modelling is just a temporary detour in her ultimate road to films and stardom.

“I have a good face, good figure, talent and guts. What else do you need to make it in films?” she asks confidently. Her mother, Najma, is equally supportive: ”Although I consider total nudity lewd, I’ve told her that a bit of compromise is all right to achieve what you want.”

Even more startling than the bold poses are the attitudinal changes among parents and peers and, in a few cases which qualify as bizarre, among spouses as well. Pooja Dasgupta, a Calcutta housewife, helps her husband in his small-scale garment factory.

That is whenever she finds time from her part-time nude modelling stints in Bombay. Pooja has recently done topless poses for Debonair, Fantasy and Chastity and is eager for more. “It’s just a hobby and my husband gives me the freedom to pursue it,” she explains.

Unlike in the past, when nude modelling was a clandestine, undercover activity, today’s pin-up girls don’t feel the need to resort to subterfuges.

“Nowadays, very few girls ask for their faces to be veiled and covered,” confirms Singhal. Adds Varsha Pardkar, Reshma’s middle-aged mother: “We cannot set our standards for this generation. Times have changed and exposing is part of their culture.”

But despite the new candour, Indian society is still a little unprepared for the Playboy – Penthouse brand of voyeurism. And however much the women try to justify their act, the stereotyped stigma of a nude model being an alluring, available woman, still sticks.

Fashion photographer Jagdish Mali wryly points out how, despite their success, the nude Monroe pictures in Playboy were also viewed as a desperate act by a destitute actress. “We are nowhere as liberated as the West,” he adds.

Swati Fernandes, a fashion designer and professional model, who recently appeared on the Debonair cover, is bitter. “Finally, it’s easier being a whore. Nobody actually gets to know what you do undercover,” she says. Living with her older sister, Neelu, Fernandes has suffered the humiliation of being propositioned and pilloried incessantly by callers and unwanted visitors.

With the Bollywood fixation on unexposed debutantes, it is hardly surprising that not a single pin-up model has made it as a starlet, leave alone a top-banner actress. Reveals an insider: “I think these girls land up in bed more often than in films.”

And while film industry heavyweights such as Mahesh Bhatt and Pankuj Parashar deny any bias against former pin-ups, the ground realities are different. Claims Parashar: “The industry doesn’t give a damn about your background. You could be from Harvard or a kotha in Varanasi, if you look good and the audience likes you, it doesn’t matter.”

But the bottomline is that not one of the country’s pin-up models has touched mass celebrity status. It’s usually a case of girls who fail to get noticed through conventional channels resorting to nude modelling. “It’s like the films. First, newcomers bare their bodies to get a break, but once they are established, they move up and don’t have to do it any more,” says Rajiv Gautam, a Delhi-based model coordinator.

Ironically, nude models end up as just that – nude models. “The golden rule, perhaps, is to strip after success,” says Vinay Arya, a Bombay-based photographer. “After all Mamta Kulkarni had already made a great hit when she finally decided to pose topless.”

While pin-up models may well have dispelled myths about their identity, and magazines succeeded in sweeping male fantasies out of the closet into newsstands, hypocrisy remains. And the classic one-liner by Ranjan Kar sums up the archetypal male attitude towards such models: “Even though I have developed and launched this magazine, I still don’t take it home to my wife and kids