Coutts Woman

Sugar Mummies

Author: Barbara Walshe

Sun, sea, sand, and sex in the Caribbean… Sound tempting?  It is for thousands of women every year who make their way to Jamaica, and specifically the beaches of Negril, where female sex tourism is thriving.  Tanika Gupta thrusts this largely undiscussed subject into the limelight this month with her new play Sugar Mummies at the Royal Court.  Coutts Woman caught up with her to find out what actually went on behind the scenes.

“I couldn’t write fast enough,” insists Tankia Gupta about the two weeks she spent in Negril last year, researching for Sugar Mummies.  Sitting on the beach on her first day, it wasn’t long before her story began to unfold.  “There were these grey-haired western women walking hand in hand with very young Jamaican men.  It was fascinating,” she says.

And Gupta, 42, wasn’t exempt from the action.  “The reality was that if you were a woman on your own on the beach, you were propositioned from morning to night by young men.  They come up and say things like ‘You’re the most beautiful thing on the beach’, and ‘Hey pretty lady’. And the thing is, the patter and lyricism of the Jamaican dialect is so seductive that I could completely buy why women would fall for it.” 

‘Falling’ for it?

But whether women are simply ‘falling’ for these lines is an issue Gupta explores in Sugar Mummies.  “Most women were saying they’re just having fun, while it was clear that others fell for it.  It was a case of the head saying one thing and the heart and body saying quite another,” she laughs. 

One woman she interviewed had been returning to the same guy in Jamaica three or four times a year, for the past five years.  “She kept saying to me ‘Oh, I don’t have any illusions, I know how he is’.  But when you saw them together, you felt she was totally in love.”

The Jamaican locals had another view, saying the female tourists were often ‘broken’ in some way when they visited.  “Whether that meant these women were suffering from a bad relationship or divorce, or never had luck with men, was unclear,” she says, “but in some ways, they are searching for something.  And with the place being so beautiful, like paradise, I think women feel liberated immediately by that.”

Female versus male sex tourism?

Given that there’s so little coverage of female sex tourism, how, in Gupta’s view, does it compare to male sex tourism?  “From what I could see, the difference is that the women are not necessarily going there just to have sex.  It wasn’t the most important thing.  What was important was the chocolate and flowers scenario.  The ‘Tell me I’m beautiful?’, so it’s almost as though they’re paying for the flattery and the need to feel beautiful.”  And coming from a culture in England where women are not accustomed to flattery, Gupta says you actually start to believe it. 

The other difference is how women view the men there.  In Jamaica, they are called ‘Beach boys’, not prostitutes.  To these women, Gupta says, they are their boyfriends.  “And even if they’ve had three or four boyfriends on holiday, they got quite upset when I referred to them as prostitutes.”

The fact that she never saw money being physically exchanged also goes some way to explaining these women’s views.  “What you saw were women buying things all the time.  Paying for bar bills and food, and taking the guys back to their hotel.  So it may not be that these women are paying $100 for a night of sex, but what they will be paying for is everything.  So, in a sense, these guys are professional scroungers.”

What about the men?

So who are these men, and what are their motivations?  While they come in all shapes and sizes, they are mainly very young beautiful men, say Gupta.  “Some are so young, you wonder whether they are even 18.  But they walk up and down the beach every day, literally hunting and flattering the women until one bites.”

Escaping poverty is their main motivation.  “The locals told me these men are so poor here, they will do anything.  You have a waiter earning $20 a week in a hotel and a woman paying $150 a night, so you start to understand the disparity.  There was one guy that I spoke who said he would sleep with a woman for plate of rice and peas because he was starving.”

There are other issues also touched on in Sugar Mummies, which Gupta describes as ‘humorous on one hand but also quite dark on the other’.  “It explores issues such as the legacy of slavery, and this whole objectification of black men and black sexuality which is quite disturbing.”

Being her first play showing at the Royal Court, Gupta admits she’s a little overwhelmed.  “I saw my name up in lights the other day and had a little cry,” she laughs.  “I haven’t had a play on there before, and I’m delighted now.  I saw a run of it yesterday and it’s just fantastic, the actors are amazing.  They’re these young, Shakespearean-trained actors playing gigolos and they’re having a ball.  I hope our audiences feel the same.”

Sugar Mummies is showing at the Royal Court from 5 August to 2 September.  Tickets are available from £10 to £25.  Call 020 6565 5000 or log onto www.royalcourttheatre.com for bookings.

Coutts & Co is a proud sponsor of the Royal Court theatre in its 50^th anniversary year.