"Girls"

When I was in my early twenties, I felt a very strong pressure to "perform well" during sex. I had grown up on movies and shows that had the woman riding her partner like an Amazonian warrior: confident, skilled, sleek, intuitively knowing what her partner needed and vice versa without any exchange of words, oh and usually climaxing within seconds. It wasn't until I saw Lena Dunham's TV show "Girls" that I realized sex could be messy and clumsy without disrupting its intimacy. Perhaps it's not connected to consent in a very obvious way, but I think this realization and the way that sex was portrayed in this show created the space for words and explanations, for uncomfortable moments and thereby, for me, it made it more acceptable and comfortable to tell the person I'm sleeping with what I want or what I don't want. For me this made a really important difference to my sex life.Thank you!