(sex)uality: first time sex and the pressure for perfection

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a friend’s place and decided to mosey on over to his shelves of DVDs and find something to entertain me while he cleaned. After a ridiculous amount of time spent trying to decide what to watch, I settled on season one of an old favourite, The OC.

Calvin intermittently took breaks from cleaning and joined me on the couch, regularly exclaiming how nostalgic it made him feel. I, on the other hand, mainly just admired Mischa Barton’s pores.

I’d forgotten a lot about The OC and it wasn’t until episode six that I had a distinct memory of something I thought or felt when I watched it the first time around.

In the episode, Marissa (Mischa Barton) is vaguely seeing both Ryan (good egg from the wrong side of the tracks) and Luke (jock ex-boyfriend), but after she catches Ryan making out with his legal guardian’s father’s much younger girlfriend, she runs off and has sex with Luke. By the time Ryan catches up with her to explain/apologise, she tearily tells him that it’s too late. To top it off, she finds out a couple of episodes later that Luke is a serial cheater.

The question of what it was too late for aside (I know there is great potential for a feminist soapbox here, but I’ll let it slide because people often use stupid clichés and the screenwriters may well have been trying to emulate this poignancy-without-being-poignant), I was relieved when I saw this. Marissa had sex with Luke because she was hurt and wanting revenge, and then she was upset about it afterwards. It was (and is) the closest approximation of my own first time that I have ever seen on primetime television. And even though I knew at the time that it was just a TV show, it did make me feel better about my own erroneous judgment.

It’s actually unbelievable that we place so much pressure on people to have some kind of life-altering, amazing first sexual experience. We’re honest with girls about the fact that when engaging in penetrative sex for the first time, it’s likely to hurt, but we create this image that alongside the (possible) pain and (possible) uncertainty, there should be a candles and someone who loves you and a general feeling of wellbeing. Given that the average age of first time sex in Australia is 16, this seems a rather unrealistic expectation. Adults often make shitty decisions about who to have sex with and in what circumstances and yet, teenagers are expected to do it all perfectly on their first try? Ridiculous.

The decision to have sex for the first time is an incredibly personal one, and of course I don’t think it should be done out of anger or hurt (but this applies to most things, not just sex). But that also doesn’t mean that it needs to be with a long-term partner or with rose petals on the bed, or that you’ve somehow done it wrong if your first sexual experience doesn’t involve those things (though if it does, that’s cool too). Just like your body doesn’t need to look like that of someone on TV, and you don’t have to have witty banter with your parents over the breakfast table like you see on TV, your first time is allowed to suck.

And if it does?

Well, you’re in good company. Marissa Cooper and I welcome you to our club.