Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Tinsletown is now portraying the female orgasm more accurately with a trifecta of Oscar-nominated films
The 83rd Academy Awards were Sunday, and along with stellar performances, we had good sex to celebrate! Michelle Williams, Annette Bening, and Natalie Portman were all up for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and all three had female-driven sex scenes in their films. If the academy had voted based on the most boundary-pushing sex scene, Portman would have still taken home the win.
When thinking of Black Swan, the girl-on-girl sex scene usually comes to mind, which is not surprising given the media frenzy that focused on it. There were reports of one man actually blurting out “Yes!” in a Hollywood theater when Portman and Mila Kunis locked lips, and even the Huffington Post jumped on the male-fantasy bandwagon with a girl-on-girl Hollywood retrospective to honor those types of sex scenes. Yet no one touched Portman’s masturbation scene, in which her character, Nina, indulges her sexuality. The scene was not shot to feed male fantasy, and the character's behavior was not under the direction of a man. She’s neither raped nor coerced into sex, nor does she experience the kind of anticlimactic intercourse that most women fake their way through. She pleases herself for herself on-screen, and that’s a breakthrough for Hollywood.
Hollywood sex scenes are often hot and steamy but rarely realistic. The scenes are shot to meet many needs—though accurately portraying the female orgasm hasn’t been one of them. They need to fit a predetermined time window, they have to show that something is happening, they have to fit the camera frame, and they generally aim to excite men and match the male experience. Actress Greta Gerwig (Greenberg) stated in an interview with Movieline, “If they show sex, it’s usually…the moment his penis goes into her. She arches her back, and it looks so weird and fake.”
For the past few decades, men have run Hollywood, making up roughly 80 percent of the writers, directors, producers, etc. in the biz. Speaking candidly on the subject in the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, writer-director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) points out, “In movies that are mostly written and directed by men—they mostly reflect the male experience, even in sex scenes. It’s the male perspective.” It’s not a stretch to say that men in Hollywood created, if not wrote and directed, the popularized version of the female orgasm and based it on what they thought it was or wanted it to be.
The assumption rings true with 20 females, ages 21 through 35, who took an informal survey on the subject. All of them agreed that Hollywood does not portray the female orgasm accurately. Actress Sarah Paulson (Down With Love, What Women Want) affirms that viewpoint, “It’s not really true, in Hollywood, what happens for women.” Paulson jokingly continues, “[But] I’m the only one it’s not true with.” Paulson’s statement was echoed in the results of the informal survey. Many women wrote, “What’s normal for real women?” and “Can women achieve orgasm from intercourse?” In a sense, these inaccuracies within cinematic portrayals have led to the female orgasm becoming just another oversimplified Hollywood stereotype that’s become the standardized mental picture prevailing as a kind of truth.
Martha Lauzen, executive director at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, speaks of Hollywood’s impact and social responsibility: “We have to remember that the film industry does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of our larger culture.… Our perceptions of gender are held at an extremely deep level. And to change those perceptions and beliefs about gender is very difficult and takes a very long time. That’s the power of stereotypes. They are incredibly powerful, and oftentimes we’re not even aware of them.”
The inaccuracies stem from the emphasis placed on knee-jerk moaning and overly dramatic When Harry Met Sally–esque moments that women have during sex scenes. Nicole Holofcener (writer-director of Friends With Money and Please Give) adds, “[In Hollywood films], as soon as a women is touched, she’s squealing. I imagine it’s what they want us to be doing, and I think it’s a huge disservice. That’s why the Hite Report was a huge deal [when it came out in the 1970s]. That was revolutionary because [Shere Hite] was the first person who did a ton of research on the female orgasm and that it’s not generally penetration-based.”
In bedrooms across America, many women are left challenging the popular perception, educating their partners and, in some cases, faking it until they make it. Jennifer Bass, director of communication at the Kinsey Institute, weighs in: “Most men who don’t have problems will have an orgasm through intercourse. Whereas for women that is not necessarily the case. The clitoris is how most women experience orgasms because that’s the most obvious source of nerve endings for orgasms, not the vagina. Of course, it is pleasurable for women and for some women that’s the best orgasm that they have – but for many women, it’s not necessary to have intercourse in order to have an orgasm or intercourse alone will not lead to orgasm. There’s nothing the matter with that. It’s pretty common, in fact it is more common than not.”
Without knowing better, the Hollywood stereotype also leaves men expecting the performance they see in the movies from their female partner. The 20 women informally surveyed also unanimously said that Hollywood’s portrayal of the female orgasm misinforms men. One of the women surveyed added, “If a man is stupid enough to rely on the Hollywood female-orgasm portrayal to educate himself about the female orgasm, then his girlfriend, if he has one, will just have to teach him.”
But help is on the way! With the emergence of more female filmmakers and actresses enlightening Hollywood with a female perspective, we can expect more realistic female sex scenes. Holofcener adds, “People are just going to have to be more honest, and more women are going to have to make sex scenes, portrayed more honestly.” This was seen at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where writer-director-actress Miranda July (The Future) and writer-director-actress Lake Bell (Worst Enemy) both included portrayals of the female orgasm that passed with greater accuracy. Bell said of her masturbation scene, “It’s very realistic. It’s just not that much of an event. [Women masturbate] all the time. In the middle of the day. [In the scene,] it got interrupted and it didn’t even work out. That’s how it really is.”
Thankfully, as the 2011 awards season suggests, there is room for greater diversity in these portrayals, and maybe now we are finally on the verge of some really interesting, realistic sex in Hollywood.
Thanks Elle !
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