Broad City S2 E8 (part 1) - The SSL Review

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SSL Review Intro for Broad City S2 E8 (part 1)
I'm continuing to move through Broad City, SSL Reviewing eligible scenes when they arise, and I'm well into my Season 2 rewatch.  So here we are at Episode 8, which has a couple eligible scene to SSL Review. They will be broken into 2 blogs.

An SSL Review eligible scene being those that include depictions and/or discussions of female orgasm and/or masturbation. That's the only thing I care about in these reviews. I'm looking for physical realism (if a lady is orgasming from a mere ass-cheek spank, I will call bullshit on scientific and basic anatomical ground). I'm also looking for what part the scene plays in our cultural conversation around female orgasm and sexuality. So, thems the basics. If you want more TV SSL Reviews head HERE. Want some movie SSL reviews? Go HERE.





Ilana's Masturbation Scene
Well, to be fair, it was more like a masturbation prep scene because it was abruptly ended shortly after it started. I will do this in list form because it seems more fun

Things Ilana did to prep for her masturbation

• light a candle
• put in earrings
• put on sea foam green lipstick
• squeeze lemon into an oyster on the half shell and slide that oyster into her mouth
• turn down a family picture with her parents and brother
• set up her phone with a picture of Abbi on it
• roll out a yoga mat to lay on
• drop her robe so she's wearing only a sparkly bra
• jimmy-rigged a full length mirror, face down, between a bed and a chair, so she could lay on the yoga mat and watch herself do the damn thing
• check how the junk looks in that mirror and give an approving nod to herself
• sexily gesture for her computer to come to her
• find some porn on that computer
• pick up a vibrating dildo placed close to her, and turn it on

Then it begins. She lays back, and we don't see her middle area, but she seems to have the vibrating dildo placed on her vulva/clitoral glans area - which is an incredibly sensible and realistic place for a woman to place a vibrating dildo if she's interested in orgasming.  So I'm all for that. However we don't see more than about 3 seconds of it because she noticed a familiar face in her porn and stops the whole thing.

Ilana's Retraces Her Porn Steps
Later, she's telling Abbi about it, but begins by retracing her porn steps first.

Ilana: I don't watch anything but solo porn because regular porn is like (pounding hand with fist and in a forceful voice) 'Shut up little girl! Wash my feet!' and she's all like, (in a wierd tiny cartoon voice) 'Uh don't tell my dad ok? 'cause I'm just barely legal. I love shaved pubes and tan crispy bellies and tans.' (back to normal voice) It's like ugggk. So I started with Average Sized Penis Jerk. That led me to Twins Squirting, hello!, which then brought me to Frosted Tips Masturbation.
Abbi: Wow. I just Google 'porn' - which is probably why I really, really don't like most of it.

The SSL Review Stuff
So, there was no orgasms in this. This situation was all about lady-bation, and I love a couple things about it.
1 When Ilana masturbated, she touched herself in a way that was a sensible and realistic for a woman wanting to masturbate to orgasm.
2 The pre-work to masturbation was maybe a bit much, but it showed a woman really reveling in and enjoying her masturbation. That's bad-ass because we need to see all masturbation in a better light, but especially lady-bation. The thing is, female masturbation has all the shame associated with it that male masturbation has, but without being something that is alluded to often in media and without a cultural sense that it is a normal, yet maybe funny/pathetic thing to do - a cultural consideration men enjoy but women really do not.
3 It was all done for humor, but the discussion about porn was poignant. I love that the discussion assumed that porn was a fine and normal thing that can aid masturbation, but also recognized that a shit ton of porn is not made for women - and can in fact be pretty straight-up distasteful to women. In a way, I see the message from that scene as something like: watching porn is pretty hot, but only if it is actually hot...but a lot of it is not, and maybe the main reason women seem to  like porn less is because most of the porn out there (and thus most of the porn women see) is shitty, gross, kinda distasteful porn (that I would add - rarely shows an actual female orgasm yet almost always shows an actual male orgasm). That is a nuanced look at porn that is rarely put forth in pop culture, and it's the kind of discussion that needs to take place. I talk a lot about that in the movie Science, Sex, and the Ladies.

Vulva Rating
I think these scenes had a more progressive sense of lady-bation and of women's relationship to porn than we normally see in the media. I also feel good that the masturbation scene was both positive and reflects a physically realistic way a woman might masturbate to orgasm.

So overall this gets an excellent SSL Review - 5 vulvas!
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Broad City S3 Episodes 8 & 9 - The SSL Review

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SSL Review Intro
I'm continuing to move through season 3 of Broad City, SSL Reviewing the shit out of it when eligible scenes arise. Eligible scenes being those that include depictions and/or discussions of female orgasm and/or masturbation. That's the only thing I comment on in these reviews. I'm looking for physical realism (if a lady is masturbating to orgasm by rubbing weed against her face, I will call bullshit on scientific and basic anatomical ground), and I'm also looking for what part the scene plays in our cultural conversation about female orgasm and sexuality. So, thems the basics. If you want more TV SSL Reviews head HERE. Want some movie SSL reviews? Go HERE.

Season 3 Episode 8

The Shower Scene
Abbi is showering with a dude.  It begins while she's shampooing her hair as the dude is eating her out. Well, actually, I don't know that. I assume heavily that is what's happening. She's standing, and he's knelt down in front of her facing her, but he's completely out of frame. He could honestly be doing anything down there, and there are no verbal clues about what specifically is happening body part to body part. Maybe he's getting in real close to give it a good look and diddling that clit with his palm. I mean who knows the writers' and actors' intentions behind this scene. However, I feel like most viewers would definitely assume oral sex is happening, so that's what I'm going to assume was happening.

Okay, again I don't know the specifics, but I can say these 2 things about what's happening.

1. Abbi verbalizes and moves in a way that would seem that whatever he's doing to her feels real good. 
2. She's standing upright and steady while he's doing whatever he's doing down there. She's not moving like she's getting fingers rammed in and out of her puss or like she's maneuvering to spread her legs in any way. So, that would make me assume he's messing with the upper parts of the vulva area - which is absolutely the area that needs to be stimulated for lady-gasms.

My aside about trade-off oral

Oh - did I mention that they kept trading off. He goes down, then her, then him... - getting each other aroused and switching before anyone pops off. Did I also mention that I'm a big fan of the trade-off oral? 'Cause I surely am. I love getting oral- that's 100% true. I also like giving some oral as much as the next girl, but can we all agree that giving head is 300% better if you are horny while doing it? And can we further agree that you are a hell of a lot less horny after your come? We need to take that into consideration more when we're planning the oral turns. Like, when one person gets serviced before starting in on the other, then one of you has to go down on the other even though their recent orgasm just immediately popped them back into an un-horny reality where everything is just a little more gross. It's more fun to sorta travel that horny, senseless, gross road to orgasm together, or at least closer together, like Abbi and this dude did.

Okay -back to the shower scene
Anyway, during this back and forth, he asks her to go to dinner with him and she eventually says yes. He pops up, and she begins to take her turn going down, and the following conversation happens:

Dude: Oh - you don't have to. Um, I uh...I actually finished when you said yes.
Abbi: Ahhh :) -  I definitely didn't though*

Then she kinda pushes his head down and leans her head back like she's enjoying it before the scene cuts.

*Just so you know, I added the smiley face emoticon in there to give you a sense of her tone. I believe emoticons should become standard tone punctuation, but we don't need to discuss that here.

What does it all mean?
So, let's review:

• This was a situation in which a woman and man are having a sexual situation that does not involve intercourse. 
• They are enjoying it and both orgasm (or at least they both expect to)
• There is no sense from the characters or the tone of the show that their style of sexual interaction is weird 
• The physical things that were assumed to be happening to the woman are things that could actually cause a woman to orgasm
• A woman unabashedly expects orgasm in a sexual act that could actually cause her to orgasm and her partner and the tone of the scene treat that as completely normal

Put all that together, and that's some progressive, orgasm equality style television. You'd think that this kind of sexual interactions in TV and Movies wouldn't be so rare, but it is. Most sexual interaction is intercourse, women are often shown to orgasm from only p-in-v stimulation (which in reality is rare at best), and women are often made to seem weird or too aggressive if they actively pursue orgasm in any other way besides P-in-V.


Season 3 Episode 9
This is a simple one that really just barely qualifies for an SSL Review, but I like it, so I'm reviewing it.

Abbi and Ilana are going on a trip, and the morning they leave, they are talking on the phone. They're asking each other if they packed certain things, ya know, to help each other not forget things. One of the things Abbi asks Ilana is if she packed her vibrator - which she did.

The reason this simple dialogue is important is that it normalized:

1. the owning of a vibrator, 
2. the fact that a woman would take a vibrator on a trip,
3. and the fact that a friend would know about the vibrator and understand that it should be packed.                                                                                                          

The scene and the characters treated this all as par for the course, and so all those things were normalized, which means that other things get normalized by association, like:

1. women masturbating, 
2. women admitting to friend that they masturbate, 
3. women's use of vibrators in partnered sex, 
4. and women's need for the kind of clitoral/vulva stimulation that vibrators provide. 

Those are the kinds of things that need to be normalized in order for women to gain orgasm equality in the bedroom. So simple, but so progressive.

The Vulva Rating
Broad City consistently knocks it out of the park with orgasm equality style revolution. They slide it in with humor, and hoards of people get to ingest the realistic, clit-centric, lady-bation loving, equal-opportunity-orgasm sex having shenanigans.

This is another 5 out of 5 vulva rating.
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Broad City S3 Ep 1&2: The SSL Review

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This is an SSL Review for one of my very, veriest favorites - Broad City. Goddamn if this show isn't one of the funniest I've seen, and it has all kinds of SSL Reviewable things (SSL review is exclusively the review of discussions/depictions of female orgasm or masturbation. It tends to focus on a discussion of realism and what the depiction/discussion means in the larger cultural discussion about female orgasm and sexuality - You can see a list of movie SSL reviews HERE if you're interested). However, I haven't always kept track of them to do SSL Reviews, so I'm starting here, and I'll slowly go back through older episodes. Anyway, I think this should be quick. Let me begin.

S3 Episode 1
Opening Bathroom Montage
At the beginning of this episode the screen is split between Ilana and Abbi's bathrooms. We get a montage from each side of a bunch of shit that happens in each room. It's a solid intro - top-notch really. But what caught my eye was one scenario where Ilana was getting eaten out while sitting on the toilet. It was all of 3 seconds, but it looks like she's just heading into her orgasm.

Here's the deets: She is siting on the toilet facing the audience. One leg is on the dude's shoulder (I think it's Lincoln - the dude's wearing scrubs). The other is on the ledge of the tub. Her hands are down. She's wearing a T-shirt that says "candy is dandy" (that's irrelevant), and no pants, socks, or shoes. As it cuts in, Ilana's hands are raising up from her lap, and her face has a tell-tale expectant, kinda strained expression that moves quickly to an exhale as her arms raise into a triumphant air pump with peace signs from both hands. To me, it's one of my most favorite orgasm depictions of all times. It's joyous, unabashed, non-fakey, and her face seemed to play it really right. Plus, what was happening to her at the time - a dude had his face area on her clit/vulva area - was clearly a realistic way one might elicit orgasm in a woman.

Saudi Women Scene
 So, Abbi is waiting on Ilana to show up for brunch, and when Ilana gets there, she says,

"I'm sorry I was late. I got into this depressing article matrix about these Saudi women who have to ask their keepers permission to leave the house, like uh please. I just was so pissed I had to blow off some steam and masturbate first.

Then Abbi's all like - whatever we need to get this table quick, and Ilana goes on,

"I'm really sorry, you just would not have wanted to have see me if I hadn't masturbated."

I mean what is there not to love about that (except, of course, the Saudi women situation). Any time a woman is depicted as being unabashed in her masturbation endeavors the way men often are, I'm way behind that. It gives the normalcy of lady-bation a tiddy tiny boost. Plus, masturbation is funny, and men have been using it as comedy for years. So on a comic level, I love this show's liberal use of masturbation in to hit on that largely untapped humor inherent in female sexuality and masturbation....what I'm saying is it's also just good comedy.

S3 Episode 2
Ilana's Request
Ilana gets in car with Lincoln and she's super nervous. They talk for a while and then Ilana get's overwhelmed starts climbing into his lap as he's driving. She says,

"Oh god, I need to be swaddled." 

Lincoln, quite rightly, protests this situation because, ya know, it makes him not be able to drive.

"Come on. if your not gonna swaddle me, at least let me drive and give me road head."

Lincoln says,

"Do you wanna die, and how does that even work?"

To which Lana replies,

"Road hand, whatever. Just quit the pillow talk and get me off."

She gets out of his lap and calms down and they go on talking.

It's perfect. It's so simple, and easy, and casual. That element of her that desires sexual gratification without necessarily reciprocating is a character element few women in media are afforded, and here it's played for laughs, but not because that part of her makes her ridiculous or funny. It's just that it's a part of her, and the way she expressed it in the moment was funny. She is asking Lincoln to give her head/hand, and she's kinda not necessarily serious (because you can't just like force people to do that, right?) but maybe kinda serious - like...'I'm just putting that out there, so if you want to...'

My point is that this is fantastic because it normalizes a woman's straight up desire and entitlement to orgasm just ever so slightly. I mean this little line in this little TV show didn't even the cultural playing field of male vs. female feelings of entitlement to desire and orgasm, but it's a step in the right direction for a little balance out there.  Bravo, Broad City. Bravo.

Ilana's Reaction
This isn't really something that is eligible for SSL Review, but Ilana's reaction when Lincoln tells her he was with another girl made me fall in love 100 times over with this show. That's all I will say, 'cause you don't need me spoiling it. WATCH THIS SHOW.

Vulva Rating
For the realistically depicted orgasm from cunnilingus and the scenes that function to further normalize female masturbation, and desire for un-reciprocated orgasm (and because it was all funny to boot), I give these episodes a full 5 vulva rating!
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