Movements

Behind India’s “Tradwife” Trend

The surge of “tradwives” in India may look like just another glossy Instagram-aesthetic — but dig deeper, and it reveals a tangled web of...

The First Divorce Camp for Women

India’s first “divorce camp” for women is rewriting the rules of healing in a country where marriage is often treated as destiny rather than...

Kamasutra, Christmas and Controversy

The uproar over Goa’s cancelled “Tales of Kamasutra & Christmas Celebration” has become a parable of modern India’s culture wars, where freedom of expression,...

Queer Sport Warriors

In the electric green of a suburban pitch in Sydney, sweat, laughter and the anxious thump of a borrowed ball tell a story seldom...

Asia’s Sex Workers Speak Out

In Asia, the history of sex workers’ organisations is a story of resistance, community power, and the quiet courage of people who have long...

Steel Women, Spinning on Poles

In the heart of Shanghai, where neon-lit skyscrapers brush the clouds and the Alibaba drones whir overhead, a powerful undercurrent of 'femininity' is quietly...

When Business Has Rainbow Colors

Bangkok has long sold itself on sunlight, street food and that indefinable sense of sanuk (fun), but in 2025 another draw is moving quietly...

Leavers: Pack, Use, Test

As the sun dips low over Western Australia’s south-west coast and the sand dunes of Dunsborough beckon, thousands of Year 12 students are gearing...
Auntie Spices It Out
Commentary

Asian Men’s Top Fantasy? The Woman Next Door

January 25, 2026

I’ve lost count of how many times men—usually smug, usually underwhelming—have told me that men are “visual creatures” and therefore need porn stars with impossible bodies and Olympic flexibility. Darling, if that were true, Asia would look very different after dark. What Asian men actually click on, linger over, and return to again and again is not the spectacular. It’s the plausible. It’s the woman who looks like she could borrow your charger and complain about the aircon. This does not surprise Auntie in the slightest. For decades, Asian societies...
Commentary

When ‘Dangdut’ Dancers Cross Religious Red Lines

January 25, 2026

Spicy Auntie has seen this movie before, and honestly, I could recite the dialogue in my sleep. Sexy dangdut singer appears. Hips move. Men cheer. Phones come out. Someone yells “haram”. Someone else yells “culture”. Cue apologies, moral outrage, calls for punishment, and a sudden national panic about the collapse of civilisation — all triggered by a woman doing her job on a stage. What amused me this time is the performance of shock. As if Indonesia woke up yesterday and discovered that dangdut involves bodies. As if villagers have...
Commentary

The Radical Feminism of Studio Ghibli’s Girls

January 24, 2026

Hollywood? Pixar? Disney? Princesses, princesses, mermaids, sparkly eyelashes and sidekicks who exist mainly to applaud? Pffff. Auntie yawns. Give me the girls and women of Studio Ghibli any day, every day, preferably with wind in their hair, dirt under their nails, and absolutely no interest in being “chosen.” What I love about Ghibli women—those created by the wonderfully stubborn Hayao Miyazaki—is that they don’t perform strength. They live it. They work. They get tired. They get scared. They mess up. They don’t strike power poses or announce themselves as icons....
Commentary

The Seductive, Erotic Power of Old Shanghai Style

January 24, 2026

Spicy Auntie has another embarrassing confession to make. I am weak for Old Shanghai kitsch. Put me in a dim bar with red velvet curtains, a jazz trio pretending it’s 1936, and a hostess in a perfectly tailored cheongsam, and my critical faculties immediately start fighting my pleasure receptors. I know exactly what is being sold to me — and yet, like so many of us, I keep buying the fantasy. Because Old Shanghai nostalgia is erotic in a very specific, very manipulative way. It doesn’t shout sex. It whispers...
Commentary

Rich Women, Young Gigolos, Old Hypocrisy

January 24, 2026

I have several friends in Jakarta—well… acquaintances. Women I meet at dinners, at art openings, at those polite, exhausting lunches where everyone pretends not to notice who arrived with whom. Some of them, discreetly, unapologetically, enjoy the services—sorry, the company—of younger men. And honestly? Good for them. I’m not particularly fond of rich ibu-ibu, in Jakarta, Bogor, or anywhere else in Asia, but that’s not the point. The point is the hypocrisy. The thick, sticky, moralistic hypocrisy. When older men do this—especially powerful, wealthy, “respectable” men—it barely registers. A middle-aged...
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