Let’s Talk About Sex (And The City)
June 3, 2011 No Comments
It’ official, nothing opens us up quite like a good ep of Sex and the City.
Watching the series helps people become more comfortable talking to their partners and friends about sex, a new study reveals.
Researchers from the Ohio State University explain both women and men are especially likely to discuss sex or sexual health after viewing Sex and the City if they strongly identify with one of the characters.
In the experiment, participants who witnessed Samantha and Miranda discussing sex were more likely to initiate real-life conversations than those who watched other episodes.
“Viewers model their behaviour after the characters and have these conversations in their own lives,” Professor Emily Moyer-Guse told the Journal of Communication.
“One of the powerful things about entertainment programming is that it can get people talking about important issues that they might not otherwise talk about,” she said.
This is true.
The moment an episode of Glee ends, Facebook is a-flurry with musings about teen homosexuality and self-expression, and a season of Six Feet Under generally precedes numerous conversations about euthanasia, monogamy and drug use.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have to be this way. Perhaps we should all feel comfortable talking about such things, all of the time; after all, there’s no shame in any of it.
Unfortunately this is reality, and sometimes we need a little prompting to say how we feel, and a framework that makes it acceptable.
If, for some people that framework is Sex and the City, then all power to them.
Contact the author here: brianna@morningquickie.com
