Looking back there was something so primitive yet so forward-thinking about HBO’s ‘Real Sex,’ and everyone who was definitely too young to be watching was tuning in with the remote control programmed to quickly return to Nickelodeon should their parents walk in. Years before the internet gave way to a world wide web of answering every question one could ever have about sex, fetishes, and so on, HBO’s ‘Real Sex’ was there teaching a generation about everything from sex toys to full-body orgasms. It was the Wikipedia, the erotic Google of sorts for those born in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It was the sexual awakening crush we all had but at the time probably didn’t admit to.
Cable channels like HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax were really the only places one could see sex in action back in the day. Unless your parents were making bank and you were one of the handfuls of homes that had internet and even then, it was likely dial-up and the only computer in the house was in a shared family room. Not much privacy to explore when your aunt is over visiting your mom, discussing if it’s time to toss grandma in a home. So everyone sort of just stumbled into the late-night sexual small screen pleasures of those lovely cable channels once puberty made them a hump-crazed monster AKA a normal teenager.
If you just wanted to see people having sex in a way that made you believe that was the “totally natural way” people have sex, you waited until around midnight to watch those channels but if you wanted to learn a bit, you were indulging in ‘Real Sex’ because yeah, there were some crazy-to-an-adolescent segments on there but in hindsight, the show should be celebrated to taking the time to explore these various sexual avenues and in many ways, normalizing the sex in a country that, at the time, was progressive enough but still very much leaning towards the conservative side. I mean, we had shows like ‘90210’ and ‘Melrose Place’ that were considered scandalous for the time but…let’s be real, they were Taco Bell Mild Sauce compared to what we have had in recent years on the likes of ‘Shameless’ and ‘The Boys.’
Hell, there is a show on Netflix about building a sex room. Can you imagine Ty Pennington trying to pull that off back in the day on ‘Extreme Home Makeover?’ MOVE. THAT. BUS and welcome to your new sex dungeon-inspired home. Don’t worry, we gave little Timmy his own swing in the backyard. Mommy and daddy’s is in the bedroom *wink* *wink* No, that would’ve been banned and ABC would’ve gone under immediately and we would’ve never gotten the wonders of ‘Modern Family.’
Thankfully though, shows like ‘Real Sex’ helped lay the foundation for people to not be so buttoned-up when it came to all things sexual. Yes, America is still very much conservative in terms of a lot of things like still allowing churches to thrive tax-free but somehow have stock in political matters but in terms of media, we’ve come a long way from the days of only having sexual situations and conversations on one or two shows that aired in the dead of night. For that, people my age have to tip their hat to ‘Real Sex’ for paving the way for us to be able to joke and speak freely about blowjobs and anal beads with our friends while also discussing the plight of our country after four years of an ex-reality show host somehow becoming president and in turn, creating a cult one second away from being on Jim Jones’ level.
‘Real Sex’ thank you for the education, the eye-opening information, and exposing teens and even tweens to various aspects of sex and normalizing it for many of us because…sex is…well, it’s sex and this week we’re talking about a sexual awakening crush with a couple that met when a Conservative reporter thought she was just doing a story about the BDSM work, then met a dominatrix named Master Joshua. A crush formed and her world got turned upside down, in a good way.
Crushgasm 