We explore whether Hollywood films reinforce the ‘orgasm gap’ between men and women
You don’t need to be a film buff to know that the presentation of sex in most Hollywood movies doesn’t exactly match up to the squishy, squelchy, tooth-scraping reality of actual heterosexual intercourse. It’s not like anyone ever chucked a towel down mid-bang to save their precious Muji sheets or wrinkled their face up like a burrowing vole in a big-budget rom-com (that I’ve seen, at least).
Here’s a primer on how to bang, Hollywood-style. Man meets woman. Woman’s attraction to him is implied by virtue of the fact that he is the man, and the film is about him. After a suitable courtship period (so you don’t think she’s easy), women and man engage in approximately eight seconds of deep kissing before he slips it in sans foreplay (on top, unless they’re being really risqué, in which case expect to see some nipple action). She gasps. Hands remain where they can be seen. Thrust thrust thrust. She comes, loudly. They bask in a post-coital reverie while hair clings limply to misted A-list cheeks.
Hollywood historically depicts a sanitised, male-centric view of female sexuality. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams turned in bravura and deeply intimate performances in Blue Valentine (while the attendant furore around a scene in which Gosling’s character goes down on Williams demonstrated the extent to which outdated views of female sexual pleasure persist). And the cunnilingus scene in Red Road was so realistic that some critics at the time believed it was real. But for the most part, a sex-positive, realistic celebration of female sexuality is absent from our multiplex screens.
Of course, no one’s saying that Hollywood has to accurately represent all aspects of the human experience. It’s entertainment, and we’re agreeing to suspend reality for a while. After all, small bald men can’t really cling to the top of speeding freight trains.
But the question is, whose version of reality are we accepting? In an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated industry, the reality remains that we’re being conditioned to watch films that depict heterosexual intercourse from the perspective of the male gaze. Much is said about how porn negatively impacts the ways in which young people have sex. But at least porn tends to depict foreplay – even if it’s usually in the format of an extended BJ sequence. The sex we see in most films, sans oral sex or even a desultory five minutes of fingering, doesn’t represent anything approximating the reality of what it takes to get women off IRL. In short, the depiction of sex in Hollywood films is spreading misconceptions about what female sexual pleasure actually resembles – and in so doing, reinforces the orgasm gap between men and women.
Elisabeth Lloyd is a professor of history and the philosophy of science at Indiana University, and author of The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution. I asked her to explain why the sex depicted in most Hollywood films is unrealistic. “The most effective way for a woman to have an orgasm is through a combination of deep kissing, genital stimulation by hand, and oral sex. Only 6-10 per cent of women actually orgasm through penetrative intercourse alone.”
Lloyd believes that Hollywood reinforces misconceptions about how women orgasm which feed through to men.
A third of men believe that women actually have reliable orgasms from just penetrative intercourse alone, which simply isn’t true. And a lot of these beliefs come from watching movies.
"Hollywood teaches us that when men and women get into bed, they kiss and smooch and then have intercourse – without any hands, of course – and the woman comes. And that only represents the reality of sex for less than 10 per cent of women. The other 90 per cent are going to be confused when they get into bed with their partners, because their bodies don’t work like the bodies on the screen. Hollywood has presented a norm which is impossible, a norm which is a bold-faced lie”.
I pose the question of whether Hollywood films reinforce the orgasm gap between men and women to Elizabeth Cowie, a professor of film studies at the University of Kent. “The fantasy that many Hollywood films draw upon is that orgasm will just ‘happen’ if there’s sexual attraction, but this isn’t true in real life. Foreplay enhances pleasure for both men and women, but this isn’t always represented in films. Instead films still centre on the male model of arousal and orgasm.”
What is the solution? To challenge the male-centredness of Hollywood cinema in general. “We need to support the demand for more women directors, and more stories centring on the experiences of women. As long as the protagonist of a film is male, the director is male, and the gaze during sex is from a man’s perspective, we’ll never depict sex in a way that is more realistic to many women’s experiences.”
In the spirit of helping men and women everywhere to achieve sweaty, squirmy, panty-wetting pleasure between the sheets, we thought we’d round up the most unrealistic sex scenes in movies for your amusement.
THE NOTEBOOK
Okay, so full marks to Ryan Gosling for displaying impressive core strength in carrying Rachel McAdams like she's a feather up those stairs, but he penetrates her for about three seconds before she starts moaning in this scene. Perhaps the presence of Ryan Gosling means you can circumvent the circuitry between the brain and the clitoris (I could believe this, tbh), but in terms of realistic sex, I'm going to give this a 0/10.
TOP GUN
Remember how people had sex in the eighties? With inexplicably blue lighting, really s-l-o-w-l-y, in time to a power ballad soundtrack? Well, thankfully, we don't have to have sex like that anymore. Also, sorry for making you imagine Tom Cruise naked on a Friday afternoon. SORRY.
SHOWGIRLS
You know what's more difficult than giving someone a regular blowjob? Giving them a blowjob, underwater, in a highly-chlorinated pool with a full face of makeup. Elizabeth Berkley pulls it off like a trouper in this clip from eighties classic Showgirls, but there's no doubt that this isn't going to be much fun for her. I mean, if someone gives you an underwater blowjob, surely it's the least you can do to repay the favour? All she gets in return is a faceful of pool water. Plus, I can't think of anything more terrifying than Kyle McLachlan chasing you through a swimming pool with jazz-hands and, presumably, a raging boner.
ENEMY AT THE GATES
Okay, so I get that there's not much time for foreplay when you're in a besieged Russian city in a room full of smelly, unwashed soldiers – but Rachel Weisz made the effort to stick a hand down Jude Law's pants at the least. Plus, at one point Weisz pulls a face like a kid choking on a grape at a 8-year-old's party. Which would have been more plausible as an O-face if there had been even the tiniest attempt at foreplay.
SHOOT 'EM UP
Look, Monica Belluci could lick ashes from an empty ashtray and still make it look sexy but this sex scene is 10/10 for ridiculous. Aside from the obvious lack of foreplay, there's also the fact that Clive Owen manages to take out multiple hitmen wielding machine guns mid-coitus, with nothing but a handgun (and also by the looks of it still wearing his boxers). Maybe having sex with Monica Belluci really does confer special powers (I could believe that), but let's leave the guns-and-beautiful-women-fantasies to teenage wetdreams, shall we?