From Gilmore Girls to Ginny & Georgia: The Rise of the ‘Sexy’ Teen
It hasn’t escaped the notice of viewers that on-screen sex scenes are becoming more and more frequent. As we move ever further from the Hays Code-era censorship, chaste kisses and prudish cutaways have become a thing of the past, a relic of the twentieth century. But it’s in films and television shows centred around underage characters where this development in on-screen sex is considered a moral grey area.
Imagine a real-life 16-year-old. Maybe you have a sibling or a cousin around that age. They’re children, right? It’s downright uncomfortable to think of them in a sexual context. Yet when these 16-year-olds are portrayed by gorgeous Hollywood twenty-somethings, a high-school setting is not enough to deter showrunners and audiences from viewing fictional children in a sexual light.&n...