I was fascinated by a recent interview with Amrapali Gan, the newish CEO of OnlyFans. Not by her blandly rehearsed claims that the platform isn’t mainly porn, and is, in fact, enabling diverse and empowered creativity – sports, cookery, fashion! – but by her use of the word “spicy”, which cropped up four times as a synonym for sexually explicit. “A bunch of spicy content … something on the spicier side … some of it might be spicy … spicier content.”
That feels oddly coy, when you’re talking about a site hosting, for example, “super-specific niche fetish” and “vanilla hardcore”, as an OnlyFans content creator described it on a forum. (I can’t explore further, because I’m certain if I do, a wailing Internet Pervert klaxon will resonate throughout my neighbourhood. Yes, I’m extremely well adjusted, thanks.)
But “spicy” seems to be spreading. New York magazine’s recent contemporary etiquette guide refers to Grindr as a “spicy man-on-man venue”. Then in a great New Statesman article about (hmm, let me avoid more euphemisms for what the headline calls “dating”) a woman who is having sex with a couple, their overture to her starts: “This might be a bit of a spicy message.”
Where does “spicy” fit into the scale of sex euphemisms? Is it the successor to “racy” (still alive and well at MailOnline, I note) or even “risque”? And how do they relate to “raunchy”? “Sultry”, “saucy” and “smutty” are quaintly old-fashioned, like seaside cartoon postcards. “Adult” is horrible, evoking renewing your contents insurance and routine colonoscopies (though yes, someone is probably already putting those on OnlyFans). “Sensual” is the worst, instantly evoking a bare-chested Sting in warrior pose.
Of course we need descriptors less clinical than “sexually explicit” – you don’t want to sound like a Tory MP’s resignation letter. Maybe we’ve landed on “spicy” as the best of a bad bunch? But it’s interesting how we let food descriptors stand for sex: spicy, saucy, vanilla. Why stick to those? Let’s get really transgressive: time for some sour, bitter and umami content.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
