In the 80s Everyone Was Having Sex, Now We Just Watch It on TV…
It’s Surreal
We pretend to be sexually liberated, but we’re handcuffed by our own hang-ups. I can’t help but smirk at the reactions to Disney+’s new series “Rivals.”
We’ve become a society that consumes sex through pixels but is terrified of experiencing it in real life. How did we end up in this collective emotional masturbation?
Within the first 10 seconds of “Rivals,” we’re thrown into a world where desire doesn’t ask for permission. David Tennant, Aidan Turner, and Alex Hassell appear naked as naturally as we now share pictures of our breakfast.
A nude tennis scene between Rupert Campbell-Black and Sarah Stratton is doing more for the sexuality debate than a thousand Twitter threads.
I grew up in an era when desire was something you lived without apologizing, not something you passively observed through a screen while mindlessly scrolling through TikTok.
We fucked without wondering if the angle was flattering or if the lighting highlighted our imperfections. Pleasure didn’t need filters, and orgasms didn’t require social validation.