Amy Schumer SNL S48 Ep5 - The SSL Review

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SNL S48 Ep 4 Amy Schumer 

We all know Saturday Night Live, right? I hadn't seen it for a while because it used to be on Hulu, and then it disappeared, but I have access to Peacock now, so I'm checking it out again. As one might expect the one with Amy Schumer as host has a little lady-bation in it, so an SSL Review was needed.

An SSL Review (for those that don't know about them)

Only depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or female masturbation and/or the clit and/or cunnilingus are eligible for SSL Review. Nothing else counts, including plain 'ol sex if it doesn't include anything listed above. I specifically critique the realism (for instance, were the physical things happening to that women while she orgasmed things that could realistically cause orgasm for a woman?) and also speak on what the depiction/discussion reflects from and adds to the larger cultural discussion around lady-gasms and female sexuality.

You can see all the SSL TV Reviews HERE (and as always you can find all the movie SSL Reviews HERE).

 

The Watcher (wherein Amy plays a mother that masturbates to Property Brothers)

I'll give you a quick rundown of the lady-bation stuff in this skit, and then give a quick assessment and vulva rating.

This skit is called, "The Watcher," and basically a family (mom, dad, teen son, teen daughter) get a letter from someone claiming to watch them. He describes things they each do in the house, and they all get freaked out. Things people are doing are basic things, but when it talks about the mom, it's stuff she acts like she doesn't do; like eat a whole 2nd dinner after everyone's asleep like a greedy, panicked raccoon. Then it describes what she does as soon as her husband goes out for his morning run.

"She gets a snack, turns on the TV and pleasures herself...to the Property Brothers"

We see her reclining on the couch from afar. She reaches down inside the front of her pants, and then the shot move in to her from the chest up. She's putting a chip in her mouth with one hand and aggressively moving her hand in small circles on what one can only assume is her clit/vulva area. She look wild.

The letter eventually begins talking about the mother having trouble in the bathroom and giving herself pep talks to get herself to poop.

"She gets so frustrated, she'll go downstairs and blow off some steam with one of Property Brothers. Why is she so aroused by that show? Is it the brothers...or the property?"

We see her on the couch again with a shot from the shoulders up, and her head's leaned back and eyes closed. She almost looks in pain, but then we hear a slight gravelly "ahhh" as she's breathing out, and then she tilts her head down in a kind of relief with an 'oooo', seemingly like she came.

It cut back to the family reading the letter, and the son has the remote and is pointing to the TV. He says,

"Oh my god! Mom, someone downloaded every episode of Property Brothers!"

The mom says, "What?!" as if it wasn't her and The Looker is like trying to frame her or something.

Then the daughter goes up to the TV and says, 

"And only watched 5 minutes of each one!" 

as we see shots of episodes with minutes watched like 5:01 and 4:48.

The creeped out family decided that they should stay at a hotel, but the mom volunteers to stay behind. We see her back on the couch watching Property Brothers, and she says, 

"If you're watching, it's the property I'm into, not the brothers."

 As she's saying this, we see her from afar on the couch in the same way, but this time she's pantless with her legs wide open and a big blur over her vulva. The shot moves to a close of her face. We hear a click and a buzzing sound and then she gets a goofy, cross-eyed, happy look on her face. 

I'm into it

I mean, I am definitely into this. It's a goofy skit, and the things the mom does that The Looker sees are personal, kind of embarrassing things, so it's not like this was a shining light of acceptance and joy regarding masturbation, but it also wasn't like humiliating or shameful. It was just like a dumb joke. It's a skit that probably any other time would have been written about a dad and his masturbation habits. So, to me, this skit is just normalizing ladies masturbating through humor, and I'm into. It also insinuated a vibrator, and I'm very into normalizing that. 

Oh - and she clearly masturbates from zero to come in about 5 minutes, and I love that. It's normalizing the idea that women can masturbates as quickly, easily, and reliably as men...because they can - in surveys and in actual lab studies that actually measure and observe physical orgasm. There's an strong idea out there that it takes women longer to come, but that's not true. It just seems true because so much of the time women are not just getting banged, and their vagina is getting stimulation instead of their actual pleasure organ - the clitoris (in the glans vulva area specifically - you know, where the clit nerves are). 

Vulva Rating

I'm gonna say this isn't a progressive take on masturbation acceptance, but it is something a bunch of 8 year old girls staying up too late on a Saturday night will see before they even reach puberty, and that is progress. They will see a woman masturbating on regular old TV and their whole life they will know that is a thing, and that's progress. That is not something most of us had available to us, so I'm gonna say fuck yeah to that. I'll give this a full 5 out of 5 vulvas.

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Night At The Roxbury - The SSL Review

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Night at the Roxbury
I've watched SNL through the more and less funny years since before I can remember, so I'm for sure familiar with the Night at the Roxbury guys. I never caught the movie of this SNL skit, though, until last month when I was chillin' at a friends house, saw it was available to watch, and then started it up since none of us had seen it ever. We knew it wouldn't be like great, but ya know, maybe it would have a couple funny lines. It didn't.

It somehow was opposite of funny. It sucked funny out of the room. I mean, SNL movies aren't known for being good, but some of them are. I think Superstar with the Mary Katherine Gallagher character, holds up pretty well.

There was, however, 1 gross noise in this movie that kind of made it worth watching. I believe the foley artists must have slipped it in there just for fun, but I'll get to that in a minute. The reason I'm here on this blog, though, is because there was an SSL Reviewable moment. Spoiler alert, the Vulva Rating will be about as high as what I would give the movie as an overall rating.

An SSL Review

An SSL Review, for those that need a little refresher, is a review specifically of any discussion or depiction of female orgasm, female masturbation, cunnilingus, or the clit. I critique the realism of the depiction/discussion and also write about what the depiction/discussion says about and/or adds to our cultural understanding of female sexuality and orgasm. I try my best to just stick specifically to those SSL Reviewable moments, so it usually stays pretty focused on those parts of the movie only, but sometimes I like to digress.

So here we go. I have tons of these reviews btw. You can find all the other movie SSL Reviews HERE and the TV SSL Reviews HERE.

The Sex Scene - I-I-I-I-Ikea!
Emily (Molly Shannon) is laying next to Steve (Will Ferrell). They are talking about their family businesses. Emily, who has a head for business and sees their relationship as a way to combine and grow (this all sounds more filled out and interesting than it actually is), decides to emphasize how she sees this happening to the thick-skulled Steve by climbing on top of him and sexing him cowgirl style. She's telling how they are going to do this business plan the whole time she's riding him.

She starts out slow. We only see alternating shots of her from the shoulders up and him from the mid chest up as he's laying in the bed. She is perpendicular to his body, so there is no leaning forward or any way that her clit area might make contact with his body.

We don't ever see her hands. From the look of her shoulders, her arms are down and unmoving. If I had to guess what is actually happening with her hands, I'd say she's pressing them into his stomach to steady her as she's bouncing on him. It's possible that this character could have her hand(s) on her clit area, but if she does, we can't see that she's rubbing anything by the looks of her shoulders. It doesn't seem to me like clit rubbing was intended in this depiction at all.  She's also very clearly bouncing up and down, more so at the end than the beginning.

In fact, it's Molly Shannon, so she gets pretty spastic. She gets to the point of convolutions, throwing her head around and shaking up to the point were she seemingly comes while she's telling him they'll be as big as I-I-I-I-Ikea! Steve is clearly getting stimulation too. When we see shots of him intermittently. He's kinda doing an mouth open thing, in a pleasurable awe sort of way, but he doesn't seem to come. As soon as she comes, though, she rolls off of him, and then he says they're moving too fast (that won't spoil the movie for you - the movie spoils itself). And it's a quickie, ya'll. From the time she gets on him to her Ikea-gasm is a mere 30 seconds.

Same Dumb Lady-gasm Shit
It's an unrealstic lady-gasm, k? And not unrealistic in that she's getting off on the growth of their furniture stores or that it took a mere 30 second (some ladies pop off quick just like some guys do). It's that there didn't seem to be any stimulation of the area a female needs stimulated in order to orgasm - her clitoral glans/vulva area.

Seriously, it's like a scene where a guy comes in 30 seconds from something that is not stimulating his actual penis (no dry humping/clothes burning, not intercourse or even a touch - nothing). That kind of scene might be played in a comedy (probably to show how sexually inexperienced and turned on a guy is), but it would seem like a freak thing, something odd and over the top created for laughs. That his penis was not touched would be a main part of the comedy because we all know penises need touched for a guy to come.

Although it is just as physically ridiculous to assume that Emily would come at all from the stimulation inside the vagina she would get from bouncing on his dick with no additional clitoral/vulva stimulation (much less for 30 seconds), the foundation humor in this scene is not about the ridiculousness of how she is physically orgasming. The humor is in how hot the business talk is making her, how weird and convulsive her orgasm movements and vocalizations are, and maybe even that she finishes before him and doesn't care (How crazy, why I do say! Can you imagine! A woman like that! Putting her orgasm first and giving no shits about her man's orgasm!).

Yes, we can't say for sure she isn't diddling her clit. We don't actually see her hands or lower arms, but if Molly Shannon, the writer, and the director meant the character to be doing that, they didn't leave much clues. They sure as hell made sure we saw that she was bouncing hard up and down on the dick, so my guess is they were focusing on the intercourse as the source of her orgasm and the audience would most likely assume the same as well. I get it, though. It is depicted this way and understood by the audience this way because that's how we still understand lady-gasm in our culture. It's ridiculous and unrealistic to assume intercourse alone would ever bring a woman to orgasm, but sadly, that's the state of our understanding.

And, seriously, there's no reason to believe stimulating the inside of the vagina causes orgasm, but the whole world, even quite progressive sex-positive, sex-informed people, believe this can happen at least some of the time, so really this depictions is not really overly egregious. It's just continuing to normalize a shit understanding of lady-gasm that really needs to go away. Unfortunately, scenes like this help to make sure it stays around. And, I know this movie is over 20 years old, but it's not like that sex scene is out of date. The understanding around female orgasm has not changed in a significant enough way at all to make this scene seem outdated...and well, that's sad.

The Sound
Oh yeah, the sound was a really wet plopping sound at the time when it seemed like she sat on the dick. It was a little outrageous. We took it back a few times. It's definitely there, and like I said, maybe the only thing worth watching this movie for.

Vulva Rating
This depiction of how a lady might physically achieve orgasm is unrealistic, and it works to continue the normalization of the very wrong assumption that a female would orgasm just from bouncing on a cock. Again, it's not taking us backward. It can't because that assumption is where our sexual culture currently stands.  It's just not taking us forward, thus it adds to all the other things out there that are continuing to damage our sexual culture and particularly damaging women's understanding of their own orgasm and women's opportunities for getting off in partnered situations. If this were a better movie, I might be more lenient, but it wasn't so it gets a 1 out of 5 vulva rating.

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SNL Killing It With Girl's first Masturbation Skit - An SSL Review

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This is a post from November of 2015. I thought it a good one to re-post on this fine summer day. Please enjoy.

Um...I just saw the recent Saturday Night Live with Elizabeth Banks. You know how SNL kinda goes up and down? Well, I tell ya, I'm feeling good about his crew. They were killin' it. It was full of good shit...and then, like the light of sweet jesus engulfing my being into paradise, I saw the following skit:

It's called First Got Horny 2 U, and I just about flipped my lid when I saw it...Uh, depictions of teen girls with desire and sexual autonomy? Yes, thank you. Adolescent ladies masturbating in wierd awkward adolescent ways? Well yes, of course I'll have some of that too. Insinuations of insertion along with my masturbation? No, of course not, but you already knew that didn't you ladies of SNL?


That Skit is Revolutionary as Fuck

Seriously, it was so perfect. The masturbation was so awkward, but it was ON POINT. It was all about getting some friction on the outer parts of that little lady junk. It shouldn't be so amazing that the masturbation depictions were done with some actual realism, that there wasn't insinuations about cucumbers and self-finger-banging and stuff like that, but yet it is amazing because it's almost unheard of.  This was a bad-ass, revolutionary little skit. It might not seem that way, because it's just one skit, but a lot of people saw it, and it's something that people just don't see. It will be remembered, and it will change things and inspire a different ways of depicting and talking about girls. It will change how girls see themselves and how boys see girls.

How many little 13 year old girls watched that in their pj's in their friend's basement and awkwardly laughed because it hit too close to home. That is important shit because it normalized the fuck out of all the things that have been traditionally stigmatized so harshly for teen girls - unabashed sexual desire, masturbation, and sexually touching yourself in a way that doesn't look like intercourse.

That last one is wierd, but important because we girls learn from early on that sex involves sticking things up our vag, which is super unhelpful for learning anything about our orgasms. If we did masturbate as adolescents, we probably felt wierd about it because when we really thought about it, our outer genital stimulation that we used during masturbation didn't quite jive with what we knew would happen one day when we actually started having sex. If we didn't masturbate, we never learned what actually made us orgasm, and continued not learning about our orgasm through all the PinV sex we would eventually have. Hell, it could've been years of doin' it before we ever orgasmed. EVER.

I can't even imagine how that skit would have affected my 13 year-old self. Rubbing up against my stuffed animal in my bed looked a lot like Cecily Strong wiggling on top of that pillow at the end, and I sure as hell never saw any depiction or insinuation about female masturbation that seemed anything like that until I was well into adulthood, and barely so even then. I mean I still masturbated...a lot...even without depictions to legitimize my choices, but what if 13-year-old me knew for sure that cool actresses understood my circumstances in the same way boys can be certain by watching any number of comedy bits, teen movies, and tv that cool actors understand their masturbation/horniness circumstances? That would change things...it will change things.


The Formal SSL Review

I'm going to do a formal SSL Review because this video has depictions/discussion of female orgasm and/or masturbation, so let's get into it real quick. I rate on realism and what it contributes to the cultural understanding.

In the skit Infinity + 5 is a 90's style pop group including Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon, Elizabeth Banks, Vanessa Bayer, and Aidy Bryant. The song is about the people who they first got truly horny to, and all 5 of the women tell their stories.

Not all the stories specifically talked about/insinuated masturbating, but 3 did, one with a mention of orgasm. The rest were just about how horny they felt.

1) Cecily Strong sang, "I got up on the couch and I knocked my first one out." And by god she did. She climbed on top, laid down with her legs straddling it, and grinded against it. Although she said she orgasmed, that part wasn't depicted. (This was right at the beginning, and I for real jumped up off the couch with my hands in the air when it happened). There was also an absolutely fabulous shot of her in front of her couch laying face down on the ground, with a couch pillow under her crotch area and moving side to side. She's watching Carson Daily on TV and her father causally walks into the background, sees her and promptly walks right back out - Gold, I tell ya GOLD!

2) Vanessa Bayer, had a shot where she was sitting with her magazine with Lyle and Eric Menendez (that's who her firsts were) on the edge of the tub, and she looks up to the removable showerhead, and I think we all know what that mean, amIright?

3) Then Aidy Bryant sang, "I would sit on my hands and scoot - to a man in a dinosaur suit." Hers was the cool son from Dinosaurs, and we do see her sitting on her hands and scooting, getting that awkward teen clit friction. It was fabulous.

This skit realistically, though appropriately awkwardly, portrayed masturbation through outer vulva/clit stimulation. Plus, for all the reasons I discussed above, it was daring, progressive, revolutionary, and funny to boot. Infinity + 5 gets a strong 5 vulva rating.

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P.S. I'm going to add Infinity + 5 onto the Orgasm Equality Hero List because that skit is the kind of comedy that can really change things. I'm adding them as Infinity + 5 because I want to include all the writers and behind the scenes folks who were part of it.

Superstar - The SSL Review

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Okay - I'm just going to admit that my posting-every-3-to-4-days schedule that I had kept the last couple years is not something I'm gonna keep up with at the moment. I'll get back there, but I'm just going to be completely honest and say I'm going for a once a week situation for a while until things with my move and new job and all the stuff that goes with that get more settled.

Superstar
So that's that. Now, I'm here to write a post, and that post is an SSL Review of none other than Superstar starring Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher. I was staying at my sister's house last night while we were on a quick visit back to Indy. After much too long of searching through streaming media services (because that shit always takes way too goddamn long), we settled on watching this classic, and I might even say actually quite funny, 90's SNL flick. My teen niblings (this is a real word for nieces and nephews - look it up)  hadn't seen it before or hadn't even ever seen Mary Katherine Gallagher smell the sweat under her own armpits. They liked it too.

Seriously, I remember thinking this movie was pretty hilarious back in the day, and although it had largely horrible reviews, I say fuck those reviews - I was pleasantly surprised at how dumb and funny I still found it. It's a solid watch, and -bonus- there was one tiny little line in it that made it SSL Reviewable, so all the better for me.

An SSL Review, for those that need a little refresher is a review specifically of any discussion or depiction of female orgasm, female masturbation, or the clit. I critique the realism of the depiction/discussion and also write about what the depiction/discussion says about our cultural understanding of female sexuality and orgasm as well as what the depiction/discussion adds to our cultural knowledge on those subjects. I try my best to just stick specifically to those SSL Reviewable moments and often don't talk much about the quality of the rest of the movie...unless I want to talk about it. See all the other movie SSL Reviews HERE and the TV SSL Reviews HERE.

The line was small, but I thought a telling one and worth a review. Enjoy.


Buttons, Holes, and Poles: the line in question
It's not easy to explain exactly what was going on in the plot, but here's a quick summary to get you into the feel of the movie. The Catholic high school that Mary Katherine Gallagher attends is hosting a "Let's Fight Venereal Disease Talent Contest" sponsored by a Catholic magazine, and the top prize is a chance to be an extra in a Hollywood movie with positive moral values. Mary Katherine Gallagher wants to be a SUPERSTAR, so she enters the contest and hilarity ensues.

That's the background that you actually don't really need. So anyway, at one point the Priest/principal of the school says to a student in relation to the venereal disease theme of the talent contest:

"Girls have a button, boys have a pole, and wicked touching takes its toll."


Here's the deal. Pole does not rhyme with button. It rhymes with hole. The writers could have used hole to equate with boys' poles, but they didn't. They, quite correctly, used button. Button insinuates clit and hole, well, insinuates vaginal opening.

Let me be clear. Penises are the male pleasure organ in the same way the clitoral glans (the lady-button) is the female pleasure organ. Lady-holes are not the female pleasure organ.

The father was wise and correct in his comparison even though it is way more common, I believe, to hear people equating the penis in boys to the vagina (as in the hole) in females. That's a bullshit comparison because the vagina, contrary to popular belief, is not a thing like the penis that can be stimulated into orgasm. You might think it would be because we so often see women depicted as orgasming from penises ramming into their vaginal holes, but that's just some myth. In fact in all of scientific literature, stimulating the vaginal canal has never been physically shown to cause orgasm in a woman. It just hasn't.

But stimulating the button or the pole sure the fuck has - numerous times.

So, my point here is that I feel like there was a conscious decision by someone in the writer room to say button instead of hole as a way to sort of give props to the button, and I think that's important because the button does not get near enough props. It's sadly and stupidly always being seen as second pleasure fiddle to the hole even though it is so clearly not just the first fiddle but really the only fiddle game in town (if we're talking about orgasms). I know that's a lot of metaphor, but I think you get my drift.

THE BUTTON, NOT THE HOLE, IS EQUIVALENT TO THE POLE, and the more we hear that out loud, the more likely it will sink into our cultural brain that lady-gasms come from clit stimulation and not poundings.

Satan Ain't No Chump
I have an honorary SSL Reviewable scene too. One of the weirdo gals in Mary Katherine Gallagher's class likes to act like she is kind of possessed by Satan, himself. She brings Satan up a lot, but she's cool though. Anyway, at the end of the movie we see random couples getting together and kissing in that end of the movie sort of way. When it cuts to her, though, she starts pushing her dude's head down out of frame like she's telling him to eat her out.
I just like it because I like anything that insinuates women like to do sex stuff other than getting banged...but especially getting eaten out - because a tongue on one's clit is, well, it's a lovely thing and we should be reminding everyone of that more.

The Vulva Rating
So, I might be wrong that the choice of button instead of hole was a conscious love-the-clit choice, but even if it wasn't, it still said button and not hole. That in and of itself is a little victory for the lady-gasm given that the clitoral glans - the literal thing that causes female orgasm - is so often ignored in our sexual discussions yet the hole where penises go in, babies come out, and orgasms don't seem to be stimulated from - is constantly being brought up.

Obviously, I also LOVE seeing a girl depicted as desiring oral sex given that clit licking is a viable way to actually orgasm.

These were small choices. They weren't over-the-top orgasm equality progressive, but they were small wins towards orgasm equality.

I give Superstar a 4 out of 5 vulva rating.

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SNL Penis Rap S41 Ep11: The SSL Review

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This is an SSL Review of a skit called "At the Club" During Ronda Rousey's hosting in 2016. (You can find it HERE) For those who aren't familiar, here's the deets: SSL Reviews are only done for scenes that include depictions and/or discussions of female orgasm and/or masturbation. It doesn't necessarily say anything about the overall quality of a film or TV show - just those depictions/discussions. I'm looking for physical realism (is the physical thing happening to a woman while she orgasms actually a thing that could cause orgasm in women?), 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.

SNL Penis Size Skit (At The Club)
I have to say, I was super disappointed with this skit. It's getting a low vulva rating. Plus, I think they lost comic value by being status quo, but let me start in.

The story
So, there are 3 women at a club ( Aidy Bryant, Kate McKinnon and Ronda Rousy). They get approached by 3 men (Jay Pharoah, Taran Killam, and Beck Bennett). The ladies are all like, 'see ya. we're doing a girls night thing.' and then the guys are all over confident and like. 'I ain't worried if you're interested. We checking to see if you can handle us.' One guy, Beck Bennet, is clearly nerdier and less smooth than the other two.

Then the 2 smoother dudes start rapping exclusively about how big their dicks are and say things like,

"Got a D so big you can ride it like a boat. Throw it on the water, walk over it like a mote."
and
"I've heard people say mine's too much. I pulled it out my pants and I play double dutch."

There are cuts from time to time to the women, and we see them getting a little interested. Aidy Bryant even sexily purses her lips at them a little.

Then Beck Bennet starts in and says,

"Don't worry about mine, I'll go down on you."

It cuts right to the women who look at him, like, what the fuck? They are all confused and kind grossed out. Then it cuts to his friends looking at him like, WTF?

The two smooth guys continue to rap about their big dicks and between their parts Beck Bennet cuts in with the following lines:

"What if I just go down on you, and I don't take my pants of?"

"I throw you on the bed, my pants are on. My shirt is on. My hat is on. My socks are on. My jacket's on. Blurred Lines!"

"When I pull off my pants there's another pair of pants. Pants on. No negotiation."

"We've been doing all the talking. Let's let her talk. Like, what's your favorite fashion and way to dance? Is it bell bottoms and the boogie woogie or a satin blouse and the cha cha cha?"

He even pops in right after one of the guys sings about his massive penis and says, "must be nice."

 After all his lines, there is a cut to the women who are clearly not liking what he is saying. Aidy Bryant shakes her head 'no' at one point. and later says to him, "You're not even trying to rhyme." To which he replies, "I am trying!"

Toward the end, he just stops wrapping and kinda mumbles, "I got a great job, I'll go down on you. What are we even..."

He trails off and it cuts to the girls really unimpressed then back to him, where he says, "I don't love it, but I'll do it."

At the end, his friends and the women walk away from him, and he kinda desperately says to a random women walking by, "I got a small penis, but I'll go down on you."

My Thoughts
Okay, this is technically not eligible for an SSL review because it doesn't specifically talk about female orgasm or masturbation, but I'm reviewing because I think it actually insinuates heavily about female orgasm and I think it definitely places itself in the cultural conversation about female orgasm.

So, the insinuation with this skit was that big dicks are a way to entice women sexually. I'm not going to dog on that because hey - big dicks can be kinda fun for things. They look pretty, at least. But the skit further insinuates something problematic, I would argue, and that is that big dicks also give women orgasms. I say this because the guy who has a small dick gives his willingness to go down as an alternative to having a big dick. Kinda like he's saying he clearly can't satisfy them with his dick, but he can satisfy them with his mouth.

Let me say a few things:

• Women don't orgasm through stimulation inside their vagina (seriously - maybe a few women out there do, but scientists haven't actually identified them yet).  The insinuation that women do orgasm this way might come from a disturbingly common cultural assumption, but it's actually quite inaccurate, backward, and harmful to female orgasm
• Why were the women turning their noses up at a dude going down on them? Getting ate out is almost universally known to be awesome, but yet when it's going up against the possibility of intercourse with a big dick, it's like WAY lesser for some reason? That's some intercourse-centric bullshit. That comes from the sad and strangely deep feeling in our culture that real sex is intercourse and that it is hands down the best sex for all involved...which is completely counter intuitive to the uncontroversial truth that over 70% of women have NEVER orgasmed from intercourse. So, nice job keeping the terrible shit stain of a sexual status quo, SNL skit.
• Let me go back to this offer of a fully clothed man going down on you. So, this is not good? A woman would not want to leave a club with a dude who would make her come with his mouth and then not want to show her his stranger-danger dick??? She would not want to set back all satisfied and glad she didn't have to even worry about some sweaty dude assuring her he'll make her come with his dick, pounding on her for far too long because he drank a little too much and can barely get it up much less come in a timely manner? That's bullshit. I refer you to Bridget Everett's brilliantly hilarious, song, 'Put Your Dick Away.' 
• If a D is so big you can ride it like a boat, IT'S TOO BIG. Ain't no lady got time for that. Ain't no lady want to get with a dude trying to have a good time, but end up spending the night trying to contort her body so that he can't get his giganto dick in far enough to further bruise her cervix.
• The joke about guys having a small dick not being satisfying to ladies is not only inaccurate, but it's tired comedy. Let me put forth a better, more realistic, more fresh, and more funny direction this skit could have gone. It starts as before with the dudes rap-bragging about their giganto dicks and then instead of tired small dick jokes, it moves to a guy bragging about his average dick; about how comfortably he would fit, and how he would not bang their cervixes til they couldn't walk, and how actually he'll probably just jerk himself off while he eats her out, so the size of his dick doesn't really matter anyway...and other things like that. I'm sure starting from the premise, the SNL writers could come up with better stuff than I just did in 5 minutes. Anyway, my point is small dick jokes are usually stupid and kinda not on-point and there's better comedy out there.

The Vulva Rating
So, this SNL skit gets 1 vuvla. I am only giving a vulva out because there is some talk about eating out, and no matter the context I'll generally support that slightly. But otherwise, this song reinforced a misguided and wholey inaccurate sexual status quo that says interercourse is the ultimate in sexual interactions and that the bigger the dick the the more interested in and satisfied with it the ladies will be. And, it wasn't great comedy.

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First Got Horny 2 U: The SSL Review (aka I Love This Revolutionary AF Skit)

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Um...I just saw the recent Saturday Night Live with Elizabeth Banks. You know how SNL kinda goes up and down? Well, I tell ya, I'm feeling good about his crew. They were killin' it. It was full of good shit...and then, like the light of sweet jesus engulfing my being into paradise, I saw the following skit:

It's called First Got Horny 2 U, and I just about flipped my lid when I saw it...Uh, depictions of teen girls with desire and sexual autonomy? Yes, thank you. Adolescent ladies masturbating in wierd awkward adolescent ways? Well yes, of course I'll have some of that too. Insinuations of insertion along with my masturbation? No, of course not, but you already knew that didn't you ladies of SNL?


That Skit is Revolutionary as Fuck

Seriously, it was so perfect. The masturbation was so awkward, but it was ON POINT. It was all about getting some friction on the outer parts of that little lady junk. It shouldn't be so amazing that the masturbation depictions were done with some actual realism, that there wasn't insinuations about cucumbers and self-finger-banging and stuff like that, but yet it is amazing because it's almost unheard of.  This was a bad-ass, revolutionary little skit. It might not seem that way, because it's just one skit, but a lot of people saw it, and it's something that people just don't see. It will be remembered, and it will change things and inspire a different ways of depicting and talking about girls. It will change how girls see themselves and how boys see girls.

How many little 13 year old girls watched that in their pj's in their friend's basement and awkwardly laughed because it hit too close to home. That is important shit because it normalized the fuck out of all the things that have been traditionally stigmatized so harshly for teen girls - unabashed sexual desire, masturbation, and sexually touching yourself in a way that doesn't look like intercourse.

That last one is wierd, but important because we girls learn from early on that sex involves sticking things up our vag, which is super unhelpful for learning anything about our orgasms. If we did masturbate as adolescents, we probably felt wierd about it because when we really thought about it, our outer genital stimulation that we used during masturbation didn't quite jive with what we knew would happen one day when we actually started having sex. If we didn't masturbate, we never learned what actually made us orgasm, and continued not learning about our orgasm through all the PinV sex we would eventually have. Hell, it could've been years of doin' it before we ever orgasmed. EVER.

I can't even imagine how that skit would have affected my 13 year-old self. Rubbing up against my stuffed animal in my bed looked a lot like Cecily Strong wiggling on top of that pillow at the end, and I sure as hell never saw any depiction or insinuation about female masturbation that seemed anything like that until I was well into adulthood, and barely so even then. I mean I still masturbated...a lot...even without depictions to legitimize my choices, but what if 13-year-old me knew for sure that cool actresses understood my circumstances in the same way boys can be certain by watching any number of comedy bits, teen movies, and tv that cool actors understand their masturbation/horniness circumstances? That would change things...it will change things.


The Formal SSL Review

I'm going to do a formal SSL Review because this video has depictions/discussion of female orgasm and/or masturbation, so let's get into it real quick. I rate on realism and what it contributes to the cultural understanding.

In the skit Infinity + 5 is a 90's style pop group including Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon, Elizabeth Banks, Vanessa Bayer, and Aidy Bryant. The song is about the people who they first got truly horny to, and all 5 of the women tell their stories.

Not all the stories specifically talked about/insinuated masturbating, but 3 did, one with a mention of orgasm. The rest were just about how horny they felt.

1) Cecily Strong sang, "I got up on the couch and I knocked my first one out." And by god she did. She climbed on top, laid down with her legs straddling it, and grinded against it. Although she said she orgasmed, that part wasn't depicted. (This was right at the beginning, and I for real jumped up off the couch with my hands in the air when it happened). There was also an absolutely fabulous shot of her in front of her couch laying face down on the ground, with a couch pillow under her crotch area and moving side to side. She's watching Carson Daily on TV and her father causally walks into the background, sees her and promptly walks right back out - Gold, I tell ya GOLD!

2) Vanessa Bayer, had a shot where she was sitting with her magazine with Lyle and Eric Menendez (that's who her firsts were) on the edge of the tub, and she looks up to the removable showerhead, and I think we all know what that mean, amIright?

3) Then Aidy Bryant sang, "I would sit on my hands and scoot - to a man in a dinosaur suit." Hers was the cool son from Dinosaurs, and we do see her sitting on her hands and scooting, getting that awkward teen clit friction. It was fabulous.

This skit realistically, though appropriately awkwardly, portrayed masturbation through outer vulva/clit stimulation. Plus, for all the reasons I discussed above, it was daring, progressive, revolutionary, and funny to boot. Infinity + 5 gets a strong 5 vulva rating.

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P.S. I'm going to add Infinity + 5 onto the Orgasm Equality Hero List because that skit is the kind of comedy that can really change things. I'm adding them as Infinity + 5 because I want to include all the writers and behind the scenes folks who were part of it.