Here at One Track Mind we’re all about finding harmony between sex and positive mental health, and making sure we see this in TV and film is incredibly important. So in this series we’ll be checking in on our favourite media, assessing the level of aftercare and continuous consent found in sexual scenes. Not forgetting the presence and importance given to LGBTQIA+ sex and relationships storylines; something woefully lacking in prevalent pop culture. Get ready for our take on how inclusive, diverse and honest your favourite films and programmes really are. There’s one question on our mind: how’s your head?
“Why didn’t she run to the toilet clutching her crotch?” We cry as yet another poor woman falls foul of a fictional UTI for not peeing after sex. We’re calling out Friends for this; not even Rachel Green is capable of withstanding urinary tract infections. Yet in the first episode of season four (does “We were on a break!” jog your memory?) Rachel is seen lounging in post-coital bliss, without a skip-and-a-hop to the bathroom in sight. Come and join the rest of us mere mortals who keep tissues by the bed, Rach.
Although Friends lauds casual relationships and famously educated a generation on the amount of erogenous zones in a woman’s body (there are seven; thanks Monica) if we run it through the ‘How’s your head?’ test, we find a few inconsistencies. Not only are sex scenes decidedly fixated on penetration and lacking in the very real and less romantic aspects, but also only feature men and women engaged in heterosexual encounters. The sole characters in Friends who aren’t hetero are a lesbian couple whose relationship is a novelty joke which runs for the entire series, and we haven’t even got to the transphobic attitudes towards Chandler’s father.
Of course, it’s important to remember that for a 90s, pre-watershed family show, Friends was limited when it came to what could realistically be shown. Sex was mainly reduced to innuendo; the cast nudged and winked their way through ten seasons without any explicit displays of sexual relations, and the audience gleaned what they could from the before and after moments on-screen. However, though given the chance to show how characters interacted after they’d had sex, Friends doesn’t pass the aftercare aspect of our test. Joey, we still love you, but the amount of times you unceremoniously booted women from your apartment as soon as you have slept together is more than a little nauseating. This beloved series may have given us a lot of laughs, but it also brings to light a number of outmoded stereotypes, unrealistic relationship habits and to be honest, jokes which just aren’t funny.
The final result? It’s a fail.
Next up in the ‘How’s Your Head?’ series: Sex Education