The latest episode of Euphoria premiered this Sunday, and despite no penises getting any screen time, the debate roars on. The TV show’s awaited second season is out and it’s brought back up a lot of controversy around nudity. In true Euphoria fashion, the season opens with Fez’s grandma walking through a strip club fully staffed with naked women. But, ask anyone and they’ll tell you, the most eye-catching moment of this scene was a shot of a lipstick-stained erect penis. Unsurprisingly, no one has mentioned any outrage over the former. HBO has earned itself quite the reputation for nudity in their shows, but where have the dicks been all my life?
Every #EuphoriaDay at 9 p.m.,when the show airs its weekly episode, Twitter is abuzz discussing and cataloguing every dick that comes on screen. Many Tweeters are found complaining. Sure, it’s not the kind of thing I want to see up close and personal, and definitely not anywhere in the vicinity of my parents, but I’ve got to say, it’s about damn time. Female co-stars have been stripping for far too long for a few penises to be as controversial as they are.
The television network’s latest hit show has flipped the script with more full-frontal male nudity in one scene than all of Game of Thrones. Possibly the most esteemed show for its explicit sexual matter, Game of Thrones has fallen behind. Over the eight seasons of Game of Thrones, there were only seven male full-frontal scenes. That’s less than a penis per season! Yet, Game of Thrones is well known to feature a pair of boobs or more in just about every other scene. Don’t get me wrong, free the nipple – I just want the same amount of support for their male counterparts.
While male nude scenes are avoided like the plague, female stars are having to fight them off. Many HBO female leads are having to speak up against scripts to write out unnecessary nude scenes. Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke, spoke out on a podcast episode of Armchair Expert about her experience. Directors have tried to pressure her into nude scenes by guilting her into not wanting to “disappoint your Game of Thrones Fans.” Thankfully, not all environments are as toxic. In an interview with The Independent, Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria’s Cassie Howard, has mentioned that she feels comfortable on the set but has still had to ask to cut some of her characters’ nude scenes down. Despite her common topless stints, there has been no outcry from the show’s audience.
Even when shows try to use nudity only when justifiable and necessary, they still manage to tiptoe around male full-frontal scenes. Lena Dunham’s HBO show Girls, was highly controversial for the amount of nudity which seemed, to unknowing critics, to be gratuitous. Dunham told The Guardian people don’t want to see “bodies like mine” and used her character, Hannah Horvath, to become the “guinea pig” for body types not equally represented in TV. While I wholeheartedly stand by this, it’s a hard pill to swallow that a shot of Dunham’s wide-open beaver made the cut before a single authentic and seamless male nudity scene.
HBO is finally making moves to introduce more dicks into shows that warrant them. I mean, c’mon, how do you have a show called Sex and the City and have one penis in all six seasons? The show had a disproportionate amount of female nudity but was quite surprisingly ahead of its time. With no female full-frontal, the show is oh-for-one. The closest they came was a close up of Miranda’s au naturel bush peeking through her swimsuit, and even that was in the movie. The reboot, And Just Like That.., has come to defend its predecessor’s name with two dick shots in a single episode. While they were arguably unnecessary for the plot, I support it. The whole of the Sex and the City storyline is a scandal – that’s what it’s all about. People don’t justify every female nudity scene to this degree. A few dick shots never hurt anybody – Samantha would have wanted it this way.
I think what HBO is doing with Euphoria and And Just Like That… is great. I mean, a dick is just a dick. Destigmatize them! Hardly ever do we see boobs on-screen and flinch, so what’s the big deal? I’m not a perv – just someone who believes in smashing double standards.
Euphoria was recently renewed for a third season, so here’s to more dicks in the future!