Sex Education was groundbreaking in its portrayal of teen intimacy. But was it realistic?
Relationships
Claire BeermannSept. 21, 2023
This article contains spoilers for Season 4 of Netflix’s “Sex Education.”The fourth season of Sex Education opens with sex. So much of it: A teenage couple undresses in the college library. Two young men make out passionately against a tree in broad daylight. Orgasmic screams echo through a dorm room wall. There’s even a dog dry-humping a football
for those in the audience who havent yet figured out that in this show, really everyone does get off.
Sex Education is about teenagers in search of sex, a genre that has traditionally explored the cluelessness, embarrassment
,
and shame surrounding first love and intimacy. But in the
paradisaical
world of Sex Education, which debuted to great success in 2019 and is coming to an end
Thursday
with its
final season airing on Netflix, shame is almost nonexistent. And if there is, you can always talk about it.
One character,
Eric (Ncuti Gatwa)
, claims he sends nudes all the time. Another student,
Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood)
, tests and reviews vibrators as part of her healing from sexual assault. Previous seasons saw the principal’s son strip naked in front of the entire school and a gay student teach anal douching during recess.
And then there is
Otis (Asa Butterfield)
, the shows main character: A shy and awkward 16-year-old who, in the first episode of
S
eason
1
, said he just wanted to sit in a corner all day
,
but then miraculously became an on-campus sex therapist treating his peers and their various sexual troubles. Hes not exactly experienced himself, but he knows all about sex thanks to his mother
Jean (
)
, a sex and relationship therapist who loves to discuss her patients woes at the breakfast table.
Sex Education
has been was
widely celebrated for its open and honest dialogue about sex, as well as for its very diverse portrayal of teen intimacy. Anyone can have sex without shame, the show seemed to want to say, whether youre gay, straight, trans or in a wheelchair. The first step is to talk about it.
As a viewer whose pop-cultural sex education consisted of movies like American Pie or Superbad (both of which feature a bunch of awkward 18-year-olds hoping for nothing more than to get laid just
once
before the end of senior year), this is what made Sex Education so fascinating to watch. But one also couldnt help but wonder: Are todays teenagers really so open about sex? And do they really have so much of it? Research suggests that with the no rush for sex trend,
with
social isolation and teen depression on the rise in the U.S. and Europe,
members of Gen Z
are actually having less sex than previous generations.
The British intimacy coordinator
David Thackeray
, who joined the show in
S
eason
2
, says the many scenes of teenagers having seemingly confident, uninhibited intercourse are pretty heightened
meant to serve as a tool to open up discussion about different elements of intimacy.
There are different scenarios that these characters are in that maybe some people are going through, or have been through, or recognize
,
Thackeray
said
over
a
Zoom
interview
. And they can go, Oh, that’s a way of dealing with that! It is literally a lesson. Or at least bringing up a conversation about it. He says he remembers watching
S
eason
1
of the show, thinking, I wish I had this when I was a teenager.”
Sex Education was the first Netflix show to hire an intimacy coordinator, a relatively new profession that helps make intimate scenes both safe for the actors and believable for the audience. Groundbreaking moments included a sex scene between a
quadraplegic
boy named
Isaac (George Robinson)
and his trailer park neighbor
Maeve (Emma Mackey)
in Season 3
,
as well as a storyline about two nonbinary teens and their attempts at chest binding.
According to Thackeray, the shows writers went to great lengths to ensure the authenticity of such scenes
.
They had people who did all this research
they even brought in specialists who are specific for different intimate moments, just to make sure it’s correct in the script
,” he said. ”
And later on in the series they also spoke to the cast, asking them: What do you think your character would do in this moment?
These are certainly not easy times to make a show about teen intimacy. While a heightened sensitivity to diverse sexual orientations and gender-fluid identities is
commonplace
in liberal circles, calls to ban books
that even hint at sexuality
are on the rise in
more
conservative
parts of
America.
The creators of Sex Education have chosen to navigate this thorny discourse by making the show more idealistic than ever. In the first season, a teenager says, “I wish I could be a normal kid. In the fourth season, a client at Otis’ sex clinic declares, “I like to lick armpits. Is that normal?”
The shows setting has also become more avant-garde. While the first three seasons were set at
Moordale Secondary School
, an ethnically diverse institution but otherwise as much of a shark tank as any teenage comedy’s high school,
S
eason
4
takes place at Cavendish College, a student-run, gossip-free, pastel-colored Bauhaus dream. Theres daily meditation, silent discos, sounds baths and yoga on offer
,
one student explains to the newcomers from recently shut-down Moordale, because we believe your mental health matters. Everybody wears bike helmets, and the popular kids include a transgender couple and a girl with a hearing disability. When the elevator breaks down yet again and Isaac cant get to an exam on the upper floor, the whole school stages a sit-down strike in his support. Everyone in this college is so sweet and good-natured
,
hisses
Ruby (Mimi Keene)
, former queen bee of Moordale. Its disgusting, really. Yet this remains the only hint of cynicism the show allows, and Ruby will later come to realize that this school is trying to make the world a better place. And that makes
me
want to be better.
Sex Education does a very good job of educating viewers about the many versions of how to be intimate (the caption on the billboards reads Let’s finish together). There is gay sex, transgender sex, sex fetishizing aliens, sex with a Scottish accent. There is also emotionally abusive first love and a young man experiencing a cancer scare. In that sense, the show is a sex-ed class in itself (Thackeray says one message of the show was making sure you check your genitals for lumps and talk about it).
But for the most part, the creators seem to have been most concerned with checking every possible box in the final season
which is noble, but also makes Sex Education much more activist than realistic. Conversely, the show misses some of the issues that are still very real in the world viewers live in. Regardless of politics
or beliefs
, being a teenager is still confusing and sex is still very vulnerable. It would have been refreshing to see
a storyline about a
teenager who is not ready to have sex. And why is there no conversation about what
it’s like to be in
a relationship
with someone who is quadraplegic
? Its wonderful to see
Isaac with Maeve (and, in Season 4, with Aimee)
, but
it would be
more constructive to learn about the conflict she might experience
about his physical abilities
instead of pretending
it doesn’t exist
.
And so, some of the most relatable moments in this season are the ones that have nothing to do with sex at all: When former headmaster
Michael Groff (Alistair Petrie)
tells his son
Adam (Connor Swindells)
: I love you. Youre my son. I just dont like myself. When Otis mother Jean opens up about her postpartum depression. Or when Eric tells Otis that he does not always feel seen and understood in their friendship.
And then there is the Ross and Rachel from Friends moment for Sex Education
,
as Thackeray puts it. Two teenagers are sitting on a bed, both wearing striped, oversized T-Shirts. They say, I love you
,
then they go on to have sex under the sheets. Jeff Buckleys Last Goodbye plays in the background: Kiss me, please kiss me.
It may not be the most progressive scene of Sex Education
.
You might call it boring, even. But sometimes, thats just what you need to see to feel seen.
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