NEW YORK (NY)
TV Guide
March 21, 2019
By TV Guide Editors
TV Guide’s Sex Ed Week explores the ways TV is pushing boundaries forward – and the ways it still lets us down
It’s no secret: people love to talk about sex, baby. But what Salt-N-Pepa left out of their groundbreaking, envelope-pushing, hit single was “on television.” As one of the more democratic mediums — and often the one preferred by younger viewers (at least before YouTube and streaming platforms took over) — television has long been a battleground over the ways in which sex, gender, and related issues are portrayed. And while some critics lambast television for how certain shows may negatively influence viewers’ beliefs and behavior, television has also been praised for the ways it can fill in the gaps of understanding, helping to create better informed and healthy relationships with sexuality for its viewers.
Over the past few decades, television has played a key role in shifting the representation of sex away from a restrictive, patriarchal binary to a more open, authentic, and accurate reflection of varying perspectives and experiences. And in recent years, the way television has approached issues surrounding sexuality has expanded at a rapid rate, as writers and producers are interrogating sex in ways they either never had the opportunity to do before or never chose to do before. Thanks to shows like Steven Universe and Sex Education, TV is carving out space to provide viewers of all ages with a progressive education on sexuality and gender that will hopefully further the conversation for this generation and the next.
But while we’ve come a long way since I Love Lucy’s married protagonists slept in twin beds, it’s not as though TV has magically solved issues pertaining to outdated boundaries, biases, and misconceptions surrounding these sensitive issues. For every groundbreaking series like Vida, there’s another that continues to let down their viewers again and again when it comes to its approach to sex (sorry, Game of Thrones, but yes, we are talking about you), and the way sex scenes are filmed still has a long way to go before they’re consistently safe for the performers involved.
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