Warning: contains minor spoilers
At this point we all know something about Game of Thrones. Whether you are in the middle of binge-watching it for the 5th time or have only seen the occasional meme, you’re aware of the show and what a major cultural phenomenon it has become. From the first episode, Thrones catches your attention with guts, glory, and… boobs. So. Many. Boobs. Big ones, small ones, old and young…there are so many titties people who don’t watch the show refer to it as “the show with all the naked ladies and the sword fighting.” My question is: where are all the penises?
For a long time, a major feminist complaint (but certainly not the only one) about Game of Thrones is the lack of gender equality in their nudity. On average, there are about 3 breasts per episode (pairs being counted as 2) and .03 penises. That’s 2 weins vs 120 boobs (this is as of season 4). Now, here I’m only counting the sexualized penises that make a major appearance in the episode, not the background dingalings you might see in a brothel. Similar story for the tatas, but, of course, every single brothel scene has more background breasties than they do testes. There are a few full frontal scenes, the one I’m currently thinking of involves Ros, so even that line has been crossed. Only 2 frontal scenes with men though. So, why does it matter?
Well… There are a LOT of sex scenes… and… so many boobs… It would be nice maybe? To have some balance? I don’t know, on a show that crosses the boundaries of incest and rape you’d think that a few dicks would be thrown in somewhere. There is an over-sexualization of women in the Game of Thrones stories and even the main female characters are treated differently. Yes, you have strong women like Daenerys, Cersei, and Melisandre, but even they aren’t left out of the nudity. In the very first episode, both Dany and Cersei are put in display, and Cersei and Jaime have more sex scenes than any other characters on the show (yet we’ve never seen Jaime’s sword?). While there is a message of positive female sexuality, it is undermined somewhat by lack of equality. I’m not saying there needs to be 100 johnsons in the next season, but why not throw in 2 or 3?
Capitalism, that’s why. Sure, a few people have complained about the lack of package, but do you have any idea how many people would full on stop watching the show if there were 60 naked men? In recent years, they have even dialed back on the sex in general because it made people not want to watch the show. The people who complained then would certainly lose their shit if there were more dicks than tits, which would lead to a drop in viewers, which would drop ratings, which would lower paychecks, which would end the show. Game of Thrones main actors get paid about $1.1 million per episode, so you can imagine the cost of running a production of this magnitude. The show gets by on 2 things: boobs and violence, and they do a damned good job at it. At the end of the day, the people in charge of Thrones are more concerned with making money than they are with anything else, and, unfortunately, penises cost a lot of money.
Ultimately, including more dick in everyone’s favorite HBO drama might threaten the show’s chances of getting views. Unfortunately, it would seem that capitalism poses a big challenge to gender equality within Game of Thrones’ sexual content.