From the first sex scenes shown in movies to the ones today, sex has been depicted in media in a much more graceful and sensual way than sex truly is. Movies, television shows, and even books show and describe sex in a way that sets people’s expectations unrealistically high. This is not to say that we shouldn’t have high expectations for our sex lives, but that sex can actually be quite awkward and clumsy as well as ungroomed. And there is nothing wrong with or unusual about this. Thanks to the male gaze, however, we have been taught to believe that this is unusual.
The sex scenes that I saw in movies while growing up, from dramatic movies to comedic ones, formed in my head a very particular and far from realistic idea of how sex is and should be. In these movies, the sex scenes are strongly targeted towards the male gaze. There is no verbal consent, but rather the sexual partners somehow instinctively know that the other is willing and wants to have sex; every part of the woman’s body that is shown is completely hairless and smooth; and most of the time the man is in control and the woman’s body is on display.
These scenes not only make women feel like they must have a “perfect,” groomed body in order to be sexually desirable, but they also give men the unfair and possibly dangerous expectation that women who show some interest in them are willing to have sex with them and that these women will always be “ready” for sex (and by that I mean that they will always be shaved and nicely groomed). I obviously can’t speak for all women, but I can say that I personally don’t have the time, energy, or desire to keep my entire body constantly shaved. Shaving this often takes a significant amount of time and leads to redness and ingrown hairs, even if you use good (and most of the time unaffordable) products. I can also say that I, along with the large majority of women in the world, have cellulite. THIS IS NATURAL. THIS IS OKAY. Because of the unrealistic depictions of women’s bodies in movies, however, I thought that it wasn’t. And what I learned about sex in school didn’t help any more than these movies did.
In school, when learning about sex, students are told to use protection or abstain from having sex completely, but there isn’t enough discussion about what sex is actually like and how it works. I learned drastically more about sex from Sex and the City and Sex Education than I did from school. There is so much important information about sex that, if taught to students, would greatly reduce their insecurities and give them a much more realistic understanding of sex.
Improving women’s insecurities and their understanding of sex must start not just with sex education in schools, but also with the media. It’s important that women depicted in sex scenes look more like most women and that they’re not always hairless and smooth. It’s important that the sex shown in these scenes doesn’t always look flawless and effortless. It’s important that more women get the opportunity to portray sex in the media from their points of view.