Deliriously giggling, dancing around in your pyjamas, profound conversations that will live and die among the pizza boxes, chip bags, and newly added wine bottles — some of my favourite life moments have been from the sleepovers I’ve had with my girlfriends. I’m in my 20s, and I’m still making sure my childhood besties and I get together whenever possible to have our ever-sacred slumber parties.
When I came across an Instagram page plastered in pink titled “The Slumber Party,” I was instantly intrigued. This thesis-turned-passion project would culminate into a profound exploration of female sexual experience, brought together by a group of wildly passionate, bright women at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).
The inspiration
In TMU’s Radio and Television Arts (RTA) program, students must pitch ideas for a thesis project. The projects could be anything creative related to media production: a short film, a video game, a novel, and more.
Wanting to do more than just complete the project, student and multi-media creator Chelsi Campbell wanted to create a multi-camera show that made people feel something — have a moment of “oh,” she said.
Campbell, the show’s host and creative producer, told Her Campus in an interview her inspiration came from the taboos around conversations we have growing up and in the media surrounding sex and pleasure.
“I also find myself, [at] my big age of 22, sometimes whispering the word ‘sex,’” said Campbell. She began questioning why someone who identifies as being “sex positive” was doing this.
While we’ve made some strides in becoming a more sex-positive country for females and female-identifying individuals, conversations around sex, specifically among Gen Z, can still be dated or censored.
Lisa Dawn Hamilton, a professor at Mount Allison University and researcher on human sexuality and psychology, explained for Sex Ed East that boys are often shamed in terms of their sexuality through fear of being labelled. Meanwhile, girls “learn to suppress their desires for fear of being shamed or harmed.”
Hamilton explained that under heteronormative standards that are pushed on youth, either implicitly or explicitly, girls are expected to be the gatekeepers of sex.
So in the winter of 2023, the idea for a media project about sex, pleasure, and relationships for young women began sparkling in Campbell’s head.
“It was not only for other people but myself as well,” said Campbell.
The next steps were to pitch the idea and find a team.
putting it together
I jumped on a Zoom call with the crew, and right away, the energy and positivity radiating from the group was infectious. If my call with them speaks to the results of the show, I have no doubt that the episode will reflect the deep talks of sisterhood and non-stop laughs that all the best slumber parties are made of.
Sophie Hafner, the show’s director, joined from day one with the same thoughts as Campbell on the topic.
“I was like, why is someone who is as confident in myself as I am, am I still struggling to talk about these things,” she said in an interview with Her Campus.
With this in mind, Hafner’s goal for The Slumber Party began with creating a space where people from all walks of life could come together and learn from one another’s experiences.
Both on-screen and off-screen, the storytelling had to be curated strategically to create a fun, diverse, and educational experience.
“Even behind the scenes on set, I wanted everyone to feel comfortable,” Hafner said about the production process.
“We made sure that we were like, ‘Hey, if you want to come in your pyjamas, you totally can,’ so I think that kind of set the tone,” she said.
Along with the importance of discussing this taboo topic, the crew all shared that having a diverse cast of guests featured on the show was important to make sure the show speaks to all types of women by all types of women.
Hafner said that casting and set design “were the two biggest ways that we were able to go about telling these people’s stories.”
In comes Faith-Ann Clarke, the creative director and set designer. A look at the show’s Instagram page shows cotton candy-coated announcements and sneak peeks of the set.
“Pink was our colour from the get-go,” said Clarke. “Overall, the whole [inspiration] for the bedroom set was that we wanted this to feel like a safe place… where people usually talk about sex with their friends,” said Clarke.
A trailer for the episode shows Campbell in a silk, pink, feather-lined PJ set, sitting on a bed overflowing with pillows. The very girly choice for an all-pink, bedroom-themed set speaks to the childhood rooms in which many of us shared secrets and stories with our best friends.
“I want them to feel like they’re not just watching the show, but they’re a part of the conversation,” said Clarke.
“We did get some criticism early on about having this hyper-feminine look,” Campbell said.
I had previously touched on the topic of the hyper-feminine aesthetic as seen through Bratz dolls. In “Bratz: The Girls With a Passion for Fashion (and Feminism),” I explored how things that are considered “too girly” are often deemed lesser by our society when, in reality, it’s the feminine qualities that give us strength and unity.
We discussed this when Clarke shared that the overall inspiration for the set was “very y2k, very Bratz themed, and pink, of course!” All of these are things that don’t act as exclusionary but, instead, can bring girls together.
From the glimpses of the first episode I’ve seen, the production came together as a big, pink, cohesive machine. Eden Cupid, the show’s marketing director, summed up the execution, “It took countless months. For the project to still have gone so smoothly, so amazingly, with so many incredible crew members all putting in 100% it was like the project was meant to be made,” said Cupid.
what viewers can expect
The Slumber Party is set to come out in March 2024 and will follow Campbell hosting three segments. The show will begin with a conversation with a sexologist, followed by conversations with a diverse panel of participants, and finally, a performance by Campbell herself.
“Most people talk about sex once they’ve already been having it,” said Cupid. That’s why they’ve decided on the topic of virginity as a perfect start to their show.
When virginity is discussed on our screens, female characters are subjected to become something to be viewed instead of women whose feelings, thoughts, and perspectives we get to hear. The issue is prevalent in so many aspects of our upbringing, from celebrity culture to film and TV, and so rarely do women get to be the ones voicing the narrative.
Outside of The Slumber Party, Cupid works as an actress and advocate for Planned Parenthood Toronto. When asked about the importance of entertainment and media destigmatizing discussions around female sexuality, she shared, “I think a lot of the sexual stories told about women aren’t told by women.”
She continued that the importance lies in “[taking] more female narratives and push[ing] them with female voices because only women know what it’s like to have sex with our bodies.”
Just within our call, the four of them made space for one another to share their thoughts and opened up the conversation within the bond they created over the production of the show. The Slumber Party has clearly been created by women with a passion and love for communicating women’s stories and creating an open environment.
Campbell said that viewers can “expect to giggle a little bit, and smile … and hopefully learn something and lots of pink, lots of pink, so get the girlies ready!”
The Slumber Party airs on YouTube in March 2024.
I urge anybody who wants to relive the midnight moments of lounging around with your girls, talking about the intricacies of life, love, and friendship, to put on your PJs and join The Slumber Party!