It’s rare that a tiny little foreign market indie film gets any mainstream media attention at all. It’s even rarer that it actually trends on social media, creating calls for the public to boycott the world’s largest streaming service and results in court investigations of that company. And yet, Netflix’s new film Cuties managed to…
Category: Sex and Gender
Call For Comments: Is This The Darkest Timeline?
From Mav: It’s 2020, and the world is on fire. We all know how bad things have been. Some of the things are obvious, longterm, and we’ve done shows on them before. Some of them are new: There’s a deadly pandemic that has killed over 213,000 people in the United States (and over a million…
Call for Comments: Pretty Creepy Sexy Baby – Sexualizing Infantilization
From Mav: A few weeks ago, we did a show called “twentysomethingteen” where we talked about the phenomenon of casting fully grown adults as teens in TV shows for practical reasons (they can work longer hours) and the effect that had of creating characters who did not reasonably look like teenagers, especially compared to actual…
e129. Corsets: Enhancement, Imprisonment, Empowerment, & Empresses
The corset might be one of the most fascinating garments in the history of fashion. On one hand, it’s simply underwear. It is a garment that provides a specific function. On the other hand popular culture has made it a symbol forever associated with everything from the Victorian Age to 80s pop music to burlesque…
e128. 9 Popular Culture Pet Peeves We Hate and Why
Pop Culture is a double edges sword. The more we love a certain type of media, the more of it we absorb. But the more we absorb, the more we notice some of the tropes that are frequently repeated. And the more we notice those tropes, the more likely we are to eventually get annoyed…
Call for Comments: Corsets, Torture Device of the Patriarchy or Comfy Back Brace of Vintage Glamour?
From Katya: Or, perhaps, a little of column A, a little of column B depending on historical context and use? I know you were all waiting with bated breath for our next fashion-centered episode (I mean, I was). Listeners that have ever checked out my Instagram account (@JustThatNerdKid) know that it mainly documents my vintage…
e122. twentysomethingteen
There are a lot of television shows and movies about teenagers, both comedies and dramas.There always have been. And yet, actual teenagers on television are extremely rare. Teens are typically played by twenty-something actors (or older). This is especially the case when it comes to teenagers in shows with a heavy sexual or romantic components…
Call For Comments: TV-Twentysomething-Teens
From Mav: A friend of mine posted a meme recently that made fun of the way teenagers are depicted on television. It shows a stock photo of a typical looking adolescent boy labeled “Teenagers in real life” next to a stock photo of a rugged looking model labeled “Teenagers on Netflix.” My first inclination was…