Sex ed & the movies: a sinking ship
The results of our recent survey about the scenes that impacted you
Hey horny readers! If you celebrated last week, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. A few weeks ago, I sent a survey to find out the movies that influenced you the most. Let’s take a look at the results.
As always, thank you so much for reading the Adult Sex Ed newsletter. If you’re enjoying it, please share with friends, so they can be hilariously informed.
Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. In case you’re new, I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a comedy writer, film producer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter last year. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Want to know more? Read the whole description on substack here.
Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!
The holidays are a cozy time when many of us sit with our families and watch movies. I think it’s a universal experience to watch a sex scene with your parents by accident. My family was a bit different. I remember my mother making me watch an educational sex video when I was seven years old (she taught sex education for a while, so this wasn’t an isolated experience). My family was incredibly open that that’s why it was embarrassing as hell, especially as I became a teenager and tried to pretend that I didn’t know what they were talking about. As an adult, I can unequivocally say that knowledge is power, and that I’m incredibly thankful for those openminded, shame-free experiences.
But how much knowledge do we actually receive from movie sex scenes? The horniest scenes (that I’m a huge fan of) are often not realistic, so how does it affect us? A few weeks ago, I sent a survey about the scenes that you found the most impactful. You can read it here:
FINDING OUT THE SEX SCENES THAT SHAPED US
So, what were the scenes that actually shaped us? The results of the survey identified the sex scene of a generation. Before I get to that scene, here are some honorable mentions:
A few readers identified Top Gun as their first movie sex scene, which is ironic because, as I wrote about two weeks ago, my first movie theater experience was watching Tom Cruise pound Kelly Preston against a bookcase in Jerry Maguire. Or is she actually pounding him? I specifically called it an “explosion of Scientology” which maybe makes it equal, as that Xenu energy is coming from both sides. Tom Cruise had a few solid years of on-camera boinking and then nothing. Just a lot of running. I have so many questions about that scene, but mostly about the fantastic quality of that bookcase. It must be one of those handmade Amish-built bookcases (the quality is the best). No way was Jerry ordering from Wayfair, not with that much weight. Oh well, I digress.
Dirty Dancing and Saturday Night Fever really left a lasting impression on a few readers. Listen, theatre kids are horny. You should have seen the theme parties I went to in college, where the theme was mostly just “we are naked.” Secretary is a movie that made a lot of you horny. Another common theme: many readers mentioned sex scenes from movies that you watched as a young person, only to grow up and realize that what you were witnessing was sexual assault (like Revenge of the Nerds). LGBTQ+ readers didn’t see depictions of themselves on screen until later in life, but the first time they saw those scenes was memorable. Understandably, their most impactful sex scenes across the board where the ones where they felt represented.
There was one scene that triumphed above the rest—the sweaty hand running down the window in the steamed-up car in Titanic. The ‘90s were a time of contradiction. One part of society was going grunge, but blonde mushroom haircuts on pretty men made teenage girls weak in the knees. “Selling out” was one of the most uncool things you could do, yet Titanic was a gaudiest movie made to date, possibly of all time. It’s a movie often revisited and debated over and over again. Could Jack have fit on the door? Did he even love Rose, or was he a con-artist fuckboy who identified a vulnerable wealthy woman about to jump ship? I personally like that theory and have met versions of that man over the years.
According to an interview with Kate Winslet years later, most of the sex scene wasn’t scripted. The sweat was Evian. In real life, you’d herniate a disk in that tiny freaking car seat. But to audiences, the scene was passionate, explosive, and necessary (this one truly moved the plot forward).
What’s interesting to me is what we didn’t see. Titanic was rated PG-13, after all. This isn’t the horniest scene or the most explicit by any means, yet 19% of you mentioned it. It wasn’t limited to one generation, yet gen-x and millenial readers were the most likely to cite it. What does it say about us that the most impactful scene wasn’t as overtly sexual as it was passionate?
Maybe Titanic gave us an impression of what we wanted sex to be, and wanted sex to feel like. Who wouldn't want to run their hand down that window? Is James Cameron a sex educator? (I know he’s an egotistical director who’s obsessed with submarines, but hear me out.) If that’s the lesson that people took away from Titanic—that sex should feel exciting, passionate, necessary, shameless, and perhaps a bit dangerous—then I’m in. Bring back the mushroom haircut.
Don’t miss a newsletter!
Subscribers can access all issues here. Here are some recent newsletters you shouldn’t miss:
