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Orange Is the New Black - could it start a new trend? 0

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By Alice Koski

OITNB Orange Is the New Black could it start a new trend?

Orange is the New Black is my new obsession. Hilarious, dramatic and centred on women who are dealing with real, hard-hitting issues - what’s not to like?

If you haven’t heard about Orange is the New Black (or OITNB for short), let me fill you in. Original to Netflix, OITNB is a show which first aired in 2013 and is now two seasons strong. It’s been a huge hit with both viewers and critics and season three is currently in the works. Set in a women’s prison, the show follows its main character Piper (played by Taylor Schilling) along with many others as they serve their sentences with each other. It’s fascinating, hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking to see how the characters deal with the different issues, from addiction and loneliness to tampons and chickens (watch to find out!).

But the thing that strikes me most about Orange is the New Black is that it’s one of the only popular shows out there that represents a truly diverse range of women and portrays each of them as complex individuals. Frustratingly, a lot of mainstream television fails to do this: women are often typecast into narrow roles beside their male counterparts, such as The Girlfriend or The Love Interest. This categorising of women sends out a message that there is nothing more to these female characters than the one-sided personas they are presented with. Furthermore, mainstream television often fails to properly represent minority groups such as LGBTQ+ women and women of colour, which again presents audiences with false ideas about what women are like and how they should be.

However, I believe that every woman who watches Orange is the New Black will be able to relate to at least one of the characters. The diversity of the cast is unparalleled - there are white women, black women, hispanic women, asian women; there are women of all shapes and sizes; there are gay, straight, bisexual and transgender women (Laverne Cox is brilliant); there are old and young women. Writer for the show Lauren Morelli has written that ‘Casting the show was thrilling. The array of skin color and the range of bodies were unlike anything I’d seen on television before… it felt important to be telling stories about women who are largely ignored in the mainstream media.’ It is not just OITNB’s inclusion of these different types of women that is appealing, however, but its portrayal of them as complex individuals. Although these women are criminals, the audience is shown that this is and not the be-all and end-all of who they are. OITNB digs deeper than surface level by revealing the characters’ pasts, complexities and vulnerabilities. No, they’re not perfect role models, but they’re real and they’re complex, and they are not limited to being The Love Interest or The Girlfriend. This is something we need more of, not just in television, but throughout the media.

Unlike most media that is about or aimed at women, OITNB does not rely on glamour and style to pull in viewers. The actresses’ make up is minimal and everyone wears the same unflattering prison uniforms. Of course, make up and styling is not inherently a bad thing, but it’s refreshing to see a show that isn’t obsessed with appearance. Kate Mulgrew, who plays Red, says ‘I think women get tired of the standards that Hollywood continues to impose. On our beauty, on how we should look, on how we should behave, on what is sexually desirable, on what it is that men want. Finally, this is a series about us, and people dig it.’ I think she’s hit the nail on the head. Unlike a lot of today’s media, Orange is the New Black does not set out to make its viewers feel inferior. At the heart of the show’s success is, I think, it’s raw and realistic portrayal of women. And quite frankly, I think it’s almost a criminal offence that the world has gone without it for so long.

Talking Sex

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By Guest Blogger Janie O’Halloran

sex Talking Sex

Can you remember a time in your life when you felt so incredibly uncomfortable and awkward? I sure can. I was sitting in my ninth grade health class during the sexual education unit. Our class was taught by Mr. H, the most feared and mysterious man who walked the halls of our high school. He was also the head coach for the varsity football team, and exactly the kind of man I wanted to go to for all of my burning questions about sex−not.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure that Mr. H was a quality guy, just not the guy I felt comfortable asking what it means to ‘pop one’s cherry’? So I didn’t ask, and no one else in my class did, either. I think all of us were scared that our curiosity would suggest we were either having sex or thinking about having sex− two things that none of us, boy or girl, wanted Mr. H to know about us. As you can imagine, a lot of the questions we had about sex remained as questions.

Like many schools in the U.S., our sex education stressed abstinence and the plethora of STDs we were bound to get if we did engage in sexual activity. There was so much missing in our health class conversations. Important stuff, like relationships, sexual pleasure, and desire. Nobody talked about these experiences and feelings so we weren’t sure they were okay. Any hint of desire was about adolescent boys —assumptions that they were innately inflicted with “sex on the brain.” They wanted it. They were naturally horny and they simply couldn’t help it. But what were we? Our desire was missing. We were passive, the cause and objects of boys’ desire. So we learned by our absence that if one of us engaged in sex it was not because we wanted to, but because of a boy’s unrelenting testosterone.

Fortunately for girls out there who are experiencing their own Mr. H, there’s a way to fill in this missing information about ourselves. Scarleteen.com is an online “sex education for the real world” that every girl should know about. This website provides a place where girls and young women can engage in a free and open discussion about sex, filling in all of the topics left out of traditional sex education classes, like girls’ sexual wants and desires. Scarleteen allows girls to ask questions about sex, take polls, and gives us an opportunity to share and read the sex testimonials of other girls.

Reading this amazing site makes me more certain then ever that we need a discourse of girls’ desire in our schools’ sex education classes, not only because there are still so many girls without access to the internet, but because this conversation is fundamental to what makes us human. Perhaps if I had known about Scarleteen when I was in Mr. H’s class, then I wouldn’t have gone through most of my teenage years thinking there was actually a “cherry” that I was terrified to pop.