While porn can spark curiosity about human sexuality, learning about sex from airbrushed, scripted and exaggerated performers on screen is not the best idea. Healthy sexuality requires respect, dignity, kindness and enthusiastic consent. This kind of behavior is not something that can be achieved through extreme, unprotected, violent, manufactured sex.
It’s not just children who get their ideas of healthy relationships from media; teens are also being taught about sex expectations by watching movies and TV shows. The way they’re introduced to sex on screen has a major impact on their attitudes towards it later in life, and a recent study found that sex in media can be a big factor in forming adolescent opinions about sexuality.
One of the major problems with viewing porn is that it sets unrealistic expectations for consumers. It also can lead to unhealthy behaviors that are often linked to consuming porn like drug use, STD’s, and even more dangerous things like cosmetic surgeries.
New coming-of-age films and series have shifted toward more personalized representations of sex, like teen characters meeting their vaginas for the first time in shows like “Pen15” and “Big Mouth.” These portrayals reflect real-life challenges that teens face.
Rom-Coms
Whether you love them or hate them, romantic comedies do impact your expectations about real-world relationships. Despite their popularity, many people criticize rom-coms for promoting unrealistic and harmful views of romance and dating. They can also influence our behaviors in unhelpful ways: women are more likely to expect men to sweep them off their feet and make grand gestures, while men may feel pressured to change themselves in order to impress a potential partner.
Rom-coms often feature meet cutes, witty banter, and a happy ending, but that’s not all they have to offer. The real meat of a rom-com is the main characters’ ups and downs at work, their private doubts and struggles, and their nutty escapades with friends.
Romantic comedy nonbelievers roll their eyes at these tropes and cliches, but with the right cast and script, these contrivances can lead to joyful human connection. Just look at the recent success of Netflix’s rom-coms, like Crazy Rich Asians.
Romance
The steamy movie genre may have a reputation for being all about sex, but it’s also a place to see characters dealing with real life issues. Movies like Unfaithful, starring Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes as a marriage that crumbles after an affair, show us how complicated relationships can be, especially when secrets are involved.
Even films that don’t have intimacy coordinators (or any other kind of specialist) still use a lot of planning and rehearsal to make the scenes feel realistic. And to ensure that every nude touch is perfect, O’Brien says it’s common for actors to ask for extra body doubles to work with.
And of course, there’s the movie magic that makes a scene look realistic. For instance, Thackeray explains that if you have the right camera angles, lighting, and modesty garments, a basic sex scene can be shot in as little as two hours. That’s not bad for a film that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, right?
Documentaries
Whether you’re drooling over a hot orgy scene or just want to watch your favorite adult movie stars in some skin-baring scenes, Netflix has got you covered. The streaming platform’s overflowing treasure trove of sexually explicit movies will heat you up while you’re cuddled up on the couch or working from home.
Bully was a documentary film that generated huge public awareness around the issue of bullying. It reached tens of thousands of kids in Ontario secondary schools and was seen by millions through TV and other media channels.
The After series follows on-again, off-again college-age couple Tessa and Hardin through their ups and downs of young love and steamy sex. The series is a bit more tease than full-frontal but still delivers some eye-popping sex scenes. It stars some of the sexiest women in adult cinema, including Gladise Jiminez and Kira Reed Lorsch.