Do you have rimming coupons?
And other important questions with Brown Girls Do It Too
by Emma Louise Boynton @emmalouiseboynton
Brown Girls Do It Too is the award-winning podcast, and now stand-up show, that takes a no-holes barred approach to discussing sex - a topic typically off-limits for most Asian women. The show’s hosts, Poppy Jay and Rubina Pabani, both of whom work in the media, joined Emma at Sex Talks to chat through why they started the podcast they wish both of their mums had grown up listening to, how it’s helped each of them to explore their relationship to sex and sexuality and what they’ve learned about sex and ageing from a particularly wise podcast guest.
Surprisingly, the pair admit they didn’t really like one another when they first met. Or rather, Rubina didn’t particularly warm to Poppy when they were first introduced in the BBC canteen. But, as she told us at Sex Talks, in a love letter penned to Poppy (as was the theme for his particular Valentine’s Day event).
“I remember the exact moment I started to melt. It was in series one, when you told us how much you enjoyed rimming and how you had rimming coupons because you understood it wasn't something that you could ask for all the time. It was the brutal honesty with which you shared this information, and the love and compassion you expressed for your partner at the time, that made me realise there's more to this puppy than I thought. Almost four years later, and boy have I sipped the Kool Aid and joined the Hareem of people who have fallen massively in love with you. I genuinely think it's punk how confident you are with white man levels of self-belief.”
We too, have drunk the Kool aid and love them both. Here’s a snippet from our conversation.
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You’ve described the podcast as being something your mum’s generation lacked. Why was it so important to you to create something (Brown Girls Do it too) you feel your mother’s generation couldnt’t access?
Rubina: It's really different for us because our moms’ first language isn't English. They watch Bollywood and are not in tune with what we consider to be mainstream. I could never bring my mom to an event or to our show. I can't even tell her I do this podcast properly - I have to sugarcoat it. She came around in the 70s - she doesn't read newspapers. My mother is not somebody who would understand anything about popular culture. I'm doing this because she could never say the things that we say. We’re doing it for all generations of Asian women before us and the Asian women now, who still cannot say those things. Part of it's fun and jokes with Poppy and I laughing and part of it is punk, political rebellion for those women who can't speak up.
At what point did you stop being the ‘dutiful daughter’, and what was the catalyst that prompted that shift?
Poppy: I was forced into a marriage that went very badly. That was when I realised that I could never keep my parents or community happy. As South Asians, we have this mantra, ‘what will people think?’ - we're very collectivist, we're not very individualistic. I realised then that I have to live my life, and not the life that my parents wanted me to lead. My mom doesn't even speak English. She doesn't know I do this podcast. My two sisters initially stopped talking to me because of it. This has been such a cathartic exercise because, in reality, when we started, we never thought anyone would hear it. We didn't even share it on our socials. And now? You can't believe the sheer volume of brown women - all women, but brown women specifically - sliding into my DMs just starved of these stories. This is how they feel seen, like our stories are their stories.
“Sex is the highest taboo, right? Once you tell everyone the details of your intimate life , everything else is on the table. ”
Has this podcast helped you both become more accepting of yourselves when it comes to your relationship to sex and sexuality?
Poppy: Through talking to each other and having guests who share the many different things they desire, opens your mind. It wasn't so much my judgement of everyone else hiding me back, rather it was my judgement of myself and the shackles that put on me. The podcast allows me to explore these subjects freely and without judgement.
Why is sex such an important and interesting access point for addressing the range of issues you’ve gone on to tackle in the podcast?
Rubina: Sex is the highest taboo, right? Once you tell everyone the details of your intimate life , everything else is on the table. When Poppy and I met, we didn't know where each other lived, we didn't know our dating history or our mother's stories; but we knew what we liked in the bedroom. There's no shame after that and so it opened the door to lots of other conversations.
How has the podcast evolved since you first started out in 2018?
Poppy: When we started our podcast, it was initially about the gratuitous, salacious details of our sex lives and dating, but then it turned into a series about our mothers, about being race-traitors, about brown women dating non-asian men. Yes, we're silly and we're funny, but we talk about toxic brown men who were never our allies. We talk about our relationship with our bodies. We talk about our mothers.. We explore this idea of the British mindset around sex, and how much it informed the Indian mindset around sex.There is so much we unpack.
What is a race traitor? And why was it a topic that you wanted to delve into in the podcast?
Rubina: A race traitor is somebody who sleeps with someone outside of their race or starts a relationship with them. If you are from a minority culture, and you're in this country, there is a mentality to stick together. For us, it became really interesting, because I'd never questioned it before. We both grew up in cosmopolitan London and we have this freedom, which means something. But remember, for the generation above, it's so difficult to see and accept that. Not for us. We will love whoever we want and we make our decisions for ourselves but this comes with a lot of complications. It's really hard to think that I'm never going to have a proper Muslim marriage ceremony. It sounds silly, but it's tradition. And it's cultural. And it means something to me, yet I'll never have that and that's something I didn't even think that I was sacrificing.
Poppy: Another thing we are accused of is, ’are you a self-hating Asian?’ We're still unpacking this question but my answer is probably, yes. I was married to a brown man who was awful to me - most of the brown men in my life have been. To this day, I have a problematic relationship with most brown men. There's a lot to unpack as my experience has been tarred by these experiences but it gets even more complicated because I have a brother, and he's brown, and I want him to see a brown girl….
Rubina: I have a mixed race son, but something inside of me hopes he will bring home an Indian woman. Yes, it's hypocritical but it's really important to reflect on where it comes from. And it comes from our parents' fear. We have had all these freedoms that they never experienced. The podcast is a way to explore all this so that maybe that next generation of British Asians will be able to accept who they are, wholeheartedly.
Another topic you often discuss on the podcast is ageing, and how to resist the expectations society places on us as we age. Tell us about this.
Rubina: One of the things that we want to explore in our podcast is older women, 60+, having sex because this is something that no one talks about. We invited Seema Anand, a Karmasutra expert, onto the podcast to talk to us about ageless sex. She used an analogy about cake. When you're young and you are interested in sex, you want to eat the whole cake. And when you're young your metabolism is good and you can handle that. But as you get older, your metabolism slows down and your interest in gorging slows down and actually, you just want a slice. I find that a really interesting way to think about sex, indulgence and pleasure. What's the little bit that I can get in my day that's really going to satisfy me?
Poppy: In my early 30s, till about 35, I felt an immense amount of (biological) pressure that was put on me by other women, my mother and other men. You are however old you feel but it took years and years of me having to say that to myself to believe it. Seema has defied the pressures of ageing that society puts on us, and if she can do it, we all can. We are too busy chaining ourselves to this invisible pressure when in reality, you have your whole life to do it. When I decided that I didn't want to be a mom - because when you're a woman, you are programmed to think that your value in society is your ability to become a mother - I felt free.
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