Who puts commercials before movies?! And why don’t they let me write them?

Before 28 Weeks Later (which I loved), there was some dumb energy drink commercial (for Vault) where this guy leaves his girlfriend on the beach while he goes to the bar to get her a drink. In the five seconds he’s at the bar, some other dude hits on his girlfriend by giving her a pearl. Boyfriend (being the manly man he is) hops on a boat, explodes the ocean, and sends pearls flying all over the beach.

Then he puts a string of pearls around her neck. And the narrator says “If the girl wants pearls, then give her _____ !!”

How should that end? I’ll tell you.

“When she wants pearls, you give her a pearl necklace!!”

Obviously, right? Ugh, they totally wasted the oppurtunity for a sexy ending and just said to give her “some pearls”. Boring.

Opposite example:

CSI. On an episode involving transgender women killed while undergoing bottom surgery (oh yes. I did just say “an episode involving transgender women undergoing bottom surgery”, when talking about a show that is on national television), Grissom sits with a woman in his office. She is crying. He tells her to think of oysters. “Oysters?” she asks, and looks at him like he’s crazy. “Yes,” he says, and goes on to explain how oysters can change their gender at will, and maybe, if we evolved from the sea, maybe we were meant to do the same thing. Maybe having a fixed gender is the mistake.

I love it. Absolutely love it. One of the biggest shows on tv, and they don’t stick to the middle ground. They push the progressive envelope, especially when it comes to sex and sex positivity. On CSI I’ve seen furries, diaper fetishists, and (one of my favorites) the actress that played the slutty mom on the OC redefined as a hot dominatrix who totally schools Grissom on how BDSM is about trust and intimacy and skill, not reckless violence and uncontained danger.

Love. It.

There are endless oppurtunities to slide in sex positivity, and yet most shows (and books and magazines) play it safe, steering clear of anything that might be controversial. And by controversial I mean sex positive. “What if America thinks we support furries? What then?!” What are they so afraid of? What if America thought the King of Queens supported homosexuality? What then, besides a few more kids in the middle of nowhere feeling a little less alone, or a little dyke in San Fransisco feeling a little more like there’s hope and a little less like she can only live in San Francisco?
(oh, and can I please remind you that Jerry Falwell died? Yes. Back to what I was saying.)

There are oppurtunities in your life, too, by the way. They can be as small as staying quiet when someone makes a horribly sex negative joke (not laughing can be as loud as telling a jokester off), or as big as admitting to your best friend (as the two of you are scanning a magazine article about the 269 Ways to Tatalize Your Lover!) that you like to be tied up and spanked. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, you could just say it and then move on. Easy.
I totally snuck fresh spinach into my girlfriend’s roast beef sandwhich the other day. She didn’t even notice.

I think the same thing would happen if writers of all genres snuck sex positivity in the middle of their work. I honestly don’t think America would even really notice. I think people would get a healthy dose of some shame-erasing conversations, and we would all be better for it. Honestly.

Do you know of other shows that flaunt their sex positivity?

In deep and forever dislike of Adam Corrolla (who is the complete opposite of sex positivity, sex education, and intelligence),

.jameson.

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