Inside Amy Schumer S3 Ep10 - The SSL Review

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Inside Amy Schumer Season1 Episode 8
This show makes me laugh, and here's the best part - Amy Schumer tends to bring it when it comes to realism and female sexuality. She brought it in her movie Trainwreck, in The Joe Rogan Podcast, and largely in the other episodes of this show I've SSL Reviewed so far. She has shown a strong willingness to give the clit the glory it deserves, speak some truths about lady sex experiences, rep for actual lady-gasms - all things largely absent in media and also incredibly important to Orgasm Equality. (She could use some schooling and humbling when it comes to speaking about race though - but that's pretty true of a lot of us).

The SSL Reviewable
There is plenty to SSL Review in this show. And for those that don't yet know, an SSL Review is a critique specifically of discussions or depictions of female orgasm, female masturbation, or the clit. I focus on that and really only that (unless I want to talk about something else). I'm looking mainly at realism and about how the depiction/discussion plays in the larger cultural conversation about female orgasm and women's sexuality.

Please, my friends, do enjoy more SSL Reviews for MOVIES and TV SHOWS.

Cave of Wonders

The scene in question here (It's embedded below if you'd like to watch it) is one in which Amy is in bed with a dude - seems like a hook up of some sort.

Dude: My God you're so hot. Let me go down on you please.
Amy: Yeah, but I should give you a heads up. It takes me a while.
Dude: I don't mind. 

Amy: Have at it.

He goes under the covers, and we see him crawling under them towards her junk (This is clearly an exaggerated depiction of going under the covers and making your way towards lady parts). He gets to it, and he's looking at it in amazement. A glow is coming from it.

Dude: (amazed) what the...

Above the covers she's just chill in the bed. We don't see him because he's under the covers. She starts reads a long Russian novel.

Back under the covers, it's like he's walked into her vagina. It's a soft, childish pink cave-like set. He finds a lantern, takes it, goes up to a skeleton holding a map. As he takes the map, the skeleton's head falls off, and he screams.
In the meantime, Amy is eating chinese take-out and complaining to the restaurant about the order on the phone.
We cut back to a shot of the dude with, like, the cosmos flying past his head. He's looking ahead and says,

Dude: My god. It's full of stars.

It cuts to Amy's face. She's breathing out a simple orgasm, then says

Amy: Wooo

 As he's popping up from under the covers, she says

Amy: Oh my god, that was so good. You wanna have sex.

He's aged at least 40 years.

Dude: Hey listen huh, this was great, but I gotta be up early in the morning, so I'll just let myself out.

She's slightly surprised, but says okay and it ends.

The Labor Of Lady-Oral
This skit reinforces incorrect stereotypes
This is a tough one for me to give a clear SSL Review on because it's a bit mixed. On one hand it reinforces all the the somewhat problematic ideas our culture has about about ladygasms and cunnilingus....that it takes a really long time (he ages 40 years), that it is incredibly difficult (people died and turned to bones trying to figure it out in the past), that it's incredibly complicated (he needs a map), and it's a mystical event (I mean, he said it's full of stars...which now that I think of it must be what they're referring to in romance novel lady-gasms where women are shattering into a thousand pieces and becoming one with the universe when they come...right?). It's really none of those things, and the ignorance about the quite normal and not-really-any-different-from-male qualities of female orgasm and female stimulation to orgasm is a huge reason why there is such an orgasm gap.

It also makes fun of them...
On the other hand this skit really exaggerates these things in a way that pokes fun at them. The fascination with the exhausting journey / mysticism of cunnilingus and the female orgasm in this skit is all in the mind of the dude, not Amy. She's just, like, chillin' and shit. It ain't no thing to her. She's just living the dream of eating take-out whilst getting ate out, and when she comes, it's just, ya know, an orgasm. It's not some mind-blowing spectacle like we see in porn, read about in romance novels, or hear about from spiritual /goddess gurus and so many hip sexual advisers. It's just an orgasm. Like, an orgasm is cool and all, but it's no more complicated or awe-inspiring than a male orgasm. Some muscle tension gets released in a rhythmic fashion, and it usually feels pretty good. That's it.

I, in a way, read Amy's casualness with her orgasm in this skit as a realistic counter to the dude's ridiculous fascination; as if to point out how unnecessarily built up the myth and confusion is around lady-gasms and pussy-eating; to make fun of the obscene complications our culture artificially presses on women's ability to orgasm (seriously, it's not physically/biologically more complicated for women than it is for men...except that there's so much ignorance around how it works that it is actually hard for women to get and sustain the physical stimulation they need to actually orgasm).

My point is, I imagine that part of the intention with this skit was to make fun of how unnecessarily scared and ignorant men are of stimulating women to orgasm and how over-dramatic and frankly wrong we all are about the power and spirituality and complicated nature of female orgasm.

...but most people probably only take in the incorrect stereotypes
However, I also think that overall to most people it just emphasizes the already strongheld, but incorrect and harmful assumptions that the female orgasm is complicated, takes forever, and that performing oral sex to orgasmic completion on a woman is like doing brain surgery....a brain surgery that ends in a mystical, elusive, event known as an female orgasm. I just think it puts these ideas deeper into the cultural consciousness.

Which is bullshit because really oral sex for men and women is just like, ya know, getting the genitals aroused and then stimulating the clit area / penis with the consistency and the personally preferred firmness and movement until the muscles release into an orgasm. It's like no big deal, and it is never, ever full of stars.

The Vulva Rating
I am going to give this skit a complete middle of the road 3 vulvas because I think its heart is in the right place, and I like the casual realness Amy displays regarding her orgasm, but I don't think it puts out an overall message that contributes clearly to orgasm equality since it relies so heavily on stereotypes about lady-gasms and lady-licking. I like the skit generally though :)

(!)(!)(!)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjuIP4BPV6E