The shame and pleasure of masturbation: Poor Things gets girls’ early sexual feelings right

By Saskia Roberts, Australian National University

Poor Things can be described in one word: polarising. Yorgos Lanthimos’ film follows Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a scientist’s experiment created from a woman’s body and a child’s mind.

It won two Golden Globes and received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.

Yet others walked out of the Venice screening during its many sex scenes, one which depicts a father teaching his two sons the birds and the bees by letting them watch him and Bella in the act. (This scene has been re-edited for the United Kingdom release to comply with local classification requirements.)

While some critics lauded Poor Things as a feminist exploration of sexual liberation, others saw it as a male director and screenwriter’s exploitative attempt to portray female sexuality. Vulture writer Angelica Jade Bastién took the latter view, arguing the film:

is not interested in the sex lives of women as much as the ways in which a young woman’s body can be positioned and used […] I want to see what a grown woman thinks and feels about sex!

But I think it is wrong to read Poor Things as a film about grown women. Its most controversial scene involves children witnessing sex, and Bella begins the movie with a child’s brain. Poor Things is about the sexuality of girls. It accurately depicts girls’ early sexual feelings and shows us some more positive ways of understanding girlhood sexual desire.

https://youtu.be/RlbR5N6veqw?si=-gvm8zY2dU2dX45x

Discovering sexuality

I have interviewed 23 Australians who were teenage girls between 1970 and 2010 about how they learned about sex, and their experiences were echoed in Poor Things.

Early in the film, Bella teaches herself to masturbate and is delighted by her discovery. Many of my interviewees had similar memories, often describing themselves as “exploring” their bodies and finding enjoyable sensations in the process.

Nicole* grew up in the 2000s and told me she did not know what she was doing when she first masturbated, but

somehow when I was pretty young […] [I] discovered that it felt good.

Full Story https://theconversation.com/the-shame-and-pleasure-of-masturbation-poor-things-gets-girls-early-sexual-feelings-right-220662