Sex Tape is a movie about, well, a sex tape that can’t actually do too much in the way of showing its lead characters actually having sex. If it did, the film would be slapped with an NC-17 rating by the MPAA, and its chances of box office success would be torpedoed. The MPAA’s skittish attitude towards sexuality in film reflects a wider confusion towards the subject in contemporary American culture. Thanks to the Internet, sexual content is a few clicks away from anyone’s eyeballs. This is inducing rapid change in how people, especially young people, think about sex, and we frankly have no idea how to handle it.
Sex Tape certainly doesn’t know what to do with its risqué, potentially interesting material. It could have explored the dichotomy between how openly we share so much else about our lives while still skirting around the topic of sex. It could have asked just why it is that people make sex tapes, what it is about recording the act that holds semi-scandalous allure. But the movie plays things safe, using its premise as an excuse for nothing more than weak, generic laughs.
Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus’s Sexy Baby is far from an optimal documentary — it only scratches the surface of its topic, which is how the Internet age is changing our perceptions of sex — but the film still tackles this head-on, and it’s the first of its kind to do so. That alone is a crucial step if nothing else, and the doc makes for a fantastic conversation starter.
Sexy Baby focuses on three women: Nichole, a 32-year-old former porn star; Laura, a 22-year-old kindergarten teacher; and Winnifred, a 12-year-old budding feminist and theater enthusiast. Each of these characters provides a different perspective on contemporary sexual mores. Nichole can speak to how pornography has changed since it went online, how it has both helped diversify but also in some ways intensify the genre. Winnifred is only just beginning to awaken to what’s out there, and both she and her parents struggle with how she can best navigate the web. But the “best” storyline belongs to Laura, who wants to get a labiaplasty to make her vulva look more like a porn star’s.
It’s Laura who truly embodies what the movie is going after. Her desire for the “right” vulva stems directly from a societal expectation placed on her by pornography and, more broadly, by the patriarchy (her real motivator is how her ex-boyfriend constantly compared her body with those of porn stars). When she meets with a plastic surgeon, the walls of his office are lined with gross photoshop portraits in which he takes heavy machinery to women’s bodies as if they are cars. He openly preys on her insecurity as he pitches a labia reduction to her. Women’s bodies are heavily commodified in our culture, and he is just one beneficiary of this.
Sexy Baby leaves a lot of territory unexplored. It features three young straight white women, leaving a tremendous range of other experiences off the table. This is a subject in which we direly need the input of women from across the entire spectrum, because there is not a one who goes unaffected by these and related issues. But this doc is a good start, which is so much more than can be said for Sex Tape. Now we just need at least a dozen more films like it.
