Lee Suckling: Is Gen Z being over-sexualised?

Hunter Schafer and Zendaya star in Euphoria. Photo / HBO

OPINION:

Trying to understand Gen Z's relationship with sexuality, as an outsider, is wildly confusing. Are they "puriteens", as Rolling Stone asks, who are sexually conservative and "incensed by any display of sexuality on the internet"?

Or, are they really the queerest generation ever, with one in six reportedly identifying as LGBTQ+?

As a Millennial, I'm too old to have Gen Z friends, but too young to be their parents. Thus, my opinion on Gen Z and its relationship with sexuality and sexual activity is informed mainly by television. And because all good TV is on streaming networks now, which aren't subject censorship, what I see about Gen Z's sex life on the small screen is more progressive than we Millennials ever were.

On Euphoria, the main character Rue engages in regular, realistic sex scenes with her on-again-off-again trans lover. On the season finale of Gossip Girl, two boys and a girl decided they weren't whole without each other, and entered a throuple. Elite has graphic sex scenes in high school locker showers, and Sex Education makes Gen Z out to be the horniest generation on the planet.

That's saying something as a Millennial, because we are a very sexually liberated generation because we came-of-age in the late 1990s and early 2000s where sexual conservatism was thrown out the window. The new millennium, and the media that came with it (Dawson's Creek, The OC, et al), gave us permission to be free, wild, and open to sexual experiences. Those shows also helped our puritanical Boomer parents support us – liberalising them, too.

In the question of, "does art imitate life, or life imitate art?", I'm in the camp that believes entertainment media is often the first thing to open our eyes. Therefore, I think life imitates art a lot of the time. Are Gen Z really having three-way relationships at 16 and hooking up with all and sundry at a sex party at 18? Maybe not before seeing it on Euphoria or Gossip Girl, but such fictional examples open them to their real-life possibilities.

So begs a question some are asking on the internet. Is Gen Z being over-sexualised? Given that streaming television shows are not created BY the generation they're about is this media form misrepresenting the teenage and young adult experience?

Hunter Schafer and Zendaya star in Euphoria. Photo / HBO

Esquire argues Euphoria et al isn't about Gen Z at all, "it's a fantasy revision of high school for millennials". That is, it's a fetishised view of teen sex. The sex life we Millennials WISH we had in the early 2000s, not the one we actually had. "Perhaps the series offers a fantasy revision of teenage years for an age group whose nights on dance floors are in decline, especially after the pandemic wiped so many of them out," the writer muses.

Last month I wrote that my own dance-floor days are not only in decline, I'm happy they are basically over. From the emails I received from readers after that was published, it seems I struck a chord with my fellow thirty-somethings: we're all homebodies now. Our youth (and with it, willingness to experiment with crazy stuff) is fading. It makes perfect sense that those behind the cameras and writing rooms of all these shows are nostalgic for a sense of sexual liberation they wanted, but probably never got. Because let's be honest: yes, back then we had permission to be freaky, but the reality of high school life is that it's super mundane. And so were any attempts at sex.

This brings me to my overall feelings about Gen Z's sexuality. It's liberating for young people to go through their formative years without conservative hang-ups. But, there's something to be said for not growing up too fast. If you're going to orgies before you graduate and experimenting with non-monogamy before you've had your first job, where will you go when you reach your actual sexual peak?

So while these shows are fiction, I do hope life doesn't imitate art verbatim. Gen Z, as a generation, also has more mixed messages about who to be than us Millennials ever did. It must be terribly confusing figuring out who you are (and what you like) these days, while being influenced by pop culture's version of you. I'd like to think teenagers don't replicate the sexual behaviour they're seeing on TV until at least their early 20s. That is, when they're out of mum and dad's house, and in the real world, when they know themselves (and their true sexual desires) a little better.