Figuring the aggregated aunty: netporn, metadata and South Asian aunties

ABSTRACT This paper examines aunties as South Asia’s salient pornographic product. Aunties, whether in pornography or more mainstream South Asian cultural production, are usually coded through visual associations with the home or sartorial conventions such as the sari. The inclusion of “aunty” in netporn video titles and search tags renders aunty a metadata category that imposes auntyness on a wider range of sexualized bodies and practices. Through an examination of porn-performer Lily Singh (“Horny Lily”) and aunty-themed adult web series, we argue that “aunting” in South Asian porno-cultures is a mode produced through the interaction between metadata, text, and performance.