Orange is the New Sexy

(An old post from my former blog. *spoiler alerts* If you haven’t seen through episode 11, might want to hold off on reading this!)

 I’m wild over Orange is the New Black. Seems like I’m in good company – the show and people’s thoughts on it are popping up like mad in online newspapers and gossip columns. And with good reason – the show weaves together brilliant one-liners, subtle and not-so-subtle cultural references, diversity of race/class, and superb acting. A lot has been said and written about the show’s cast of characters and the surprising turns their relationships take.

 I want to talk about how sexy the show is, and how uniquely it approaches the idea of female sexuality. I cannot think of another show, ever, in the history of my (admittedly not extensive) television watching, where an entire cast of women are dressed in dumpy, ill-fitting clothing, but are still brilliantly SEXY. These women, clad in beige scrubs and clunky black sneakers, are attracted to each other, have sex, get spurned, and, generally, are fully sexual creatures. And yet, they are not sexual for a voyeuristic, objectifying, and/or male gaze-y audience (either the guards in the prison, or the audience at home glued to their Netflix). Sexiness in prison is not based on who can wear their scrubs the best, or who shows the most skin, or other traditional measurements of desirability when it comes to women. The show clearly states that there is no one ideal female body, with women of all sizes getting laid and loving it. These ladies are attractive because of their beauty, sure, but also because of their intelligence and kindness and sense of humor.

 Somehow even in the shower scenes where skimpy towels replace the prison clothes, women’s bodies aren’t sexualized like one would expect. Alex and Nicky, who flirt with each other like the pick-up line is going out of style, run into each other outside the showers. Instead of gaping in a way that enables the audience to voyeuristically objectify women’s bodies, Alex comments on the scar between Nicky’s breasts, and we get a flashback of Nicky recovering from heart surgery. The nudity present in the bathrooms makes the audience more uncomfortable than turned-on – aware that the floors are covered with foot diseases, and the toilet stalls don’t have doors. When your coffee kicks in, you just might find yourself on the porcelain throne watching the girl you have a crush on brush her teeth. Sex appeal is not tied to showing skin.

Alex drips sexiness, but not because she shows the perfect amount of cleavage or wears leather or never does anything embarrassing. It’s the way she smiles as though she knows something you don’t. It’s the way she takes her glasses off. It’s the way she cares, and enacts vengeance, and folds towels. When Piper is at her sexiest, it’s not when she’s in street clothes in flashbacks, but when she’s walking down the prison hall after her release from SHU with a swagger in her step and her own private, confident smile. Alex and Piper are as sexy snuggling in Alex's bed as they are dancing together at Taystee's release party. Sophia, the transgendered woman who styles everyone’s hair, is sexy because she knows who she is and what she wants, and she fights for it.

So, while there are some critiques to be leveled at the show for its treatment of prisons (not harsh enough? Too harsh?), its treatment of the female body, and female desire, and what constitutes sexy, is a breath of fresh air. It’s as though the outdoor track, which had been under padlock, is suddenly opened and we all can get our blood pumping again. 

XO,
Blythe

Lost Girl and the Radical Notion of Not Choosing

 (note, I live in the U.S. and haven’t seen any episodes from Season 4 yet.)

 Lost Girl is a delicious and awful and hilarious show. If you can see past the build-me-up-to-let-me-down season arcs (seriously, what on earth was so challenging about The Dawning? Fighting the Garuda was less difficult than fighting his henchmen, and all it took to get rid of Aife was pushing her over a banister, which any human could do), and the sometimes uneven acting, the show is doing some inventive things with and for women. And at the end of the day, that’s what I care about most in my TV.

 When it comes to Lost Girl romance, there’s Team Lauren and Team Dyson and now Team Tamsin, but what’s revolutionary about the show is that its female protagonist has a biological imperative NOT to choose. In order to Thrive (thanks, Kaiser Permanente), Bo cannot sleep with one human alone. In fact, Dyson could barely keep up with her, and that was before she dawned and blood-bonded with her friends and learned to suck chi from an entire room. Dyson probably couldn’t give her all the sexual chi she needs now. So, biology prevents Bo from monogamy.

We can get into debates about whether people are inherently monogamous or whether we've become socially conditioned into coupledom. (Maybe now would be a good time to state unequivocally that I'm happily, monogamously, married and intend to stay that way.) But on some level, Lauren and Dyson (and Tamsin) know that if they are ever to have Bo, they will have to share her. The show creates a new model for love and sex and romance -- one predicated on the notion that women have a lot of love and lust to give, and a lot of needs that might require multiple people and multiple kinds of loving/sexual relationships.

At the end of 3.10 (Delinquents), we see Lauren and Dyson in the Dal drinking shots and sharing their misery over losing Bo. Notably, Lauren admits that she had thought of Dyson as the enemy, but she has come to recognize that her enemy is in fact herself – which we can interpret as her jealousy and unwillingness to share. The scene invites the audience to imagine a scenario in which Bo might be with both of them (and perhaps others), and they might learn to curb their jealousy of each other and move forward with a new triangulated relationship to each other.

Apart from Big Love, non-monogamy is rarely depicted on screen, and I’m hard pressed to think of a show in which the non-monogamous character is a woman. After decades of cultural shaming directed at bisexuals for their threat of promiscuity, Lost Girl offers us a bisexual woman who biologically can’t chose, and avoids shaming her for this. Instead, it hints at an entirely different model of relationships, and enjoys exploring the options. Fans who insist on picking a team will inevitably be disappointed – unless they can learn to be on Team Polyamory and just enjoy the ride.

My Body, Your Patent: Orphan Black and the Ownership of Women’s Bodies

The regulation of women’s bodies is nothing new. It’s an entrenched aspect of patriarchal societies, and scholars speculate that it derives in part from questionable reproductive paternity – when a women gives birth, we can safely assume she’s the mother, but paternity is more difficult to assume and requires medical testing to incontrovertibly establish. Whatever the reason, men in positions of power have always sought to control women’s bodies.

Orphan Black is of course about many things – nature vs. nurture, the definition of family, identity, and so forth – but on a very fundamental level it is about who controls women’s bodies. The bomb dropped in the final episode of season one, that the clones’ DNA has been patented, regulates not only their own biology but also that of their progeny. In this way, the show explores motherhood in an especially progressive way, focusing on biology rather than on the soft, nurturing side of women. Children are viewed as a genetic extension of their fathers – they have their father’s last name, and often their father’s first name as well. Foregrounding the genetic relationship between mothers and children, Orphan Black escapes the traps of patriarchal reproduction: It doesn’t matter who Kyra’s father is, it only matters who her mother is. And it doesn’t matter who donated the male DNA to make the clones – they only ask who the original (female) clone is.

 

Discovering that their bodies are property will (one can assume) lead to resistance, but also to huge existential questions: are the clones more than their biology? Can a human actually be property? Moving beyond the philosophical examination of what it means to be human, the show asks more specifically what it means to be a woman, and a woman seeking to reclaim her body in a universe that considers her skin and hair and synapses property of someone (since corporations are people too!) else.

As the show continues to unfold, laws regulating DNA patents are shifting. It will be interesting to see if the Orphans turn to the law as a means to reclaim their bodies, or if they decide (as I’m sure Sarah would advocate) to operate outside the law to terminate any connection between their creators and themselves. Either way, the central conflict of the show promises to be the reclaiming of women’s bodies as their own, and no one else’s. Against the cultural backdrop (in the U.S. and elsewhere) of heated rhetoric about contraception and abortion, Orphan Black’s representation of women’s bodies is refreshing, mostly because it’s told from the woman’s point of view.