Friends Don’t Let Friends Reach Into Each Other’s Vaginas

I love TV shows, especially ones where the complex lives of women, their friends, their love lives and their careers are the central themes, and depicted in a non stereotypical manner. For someone with interests such as these, today’s TV landscape is a gift that keeps on giving. With female-centric shows like Sex and The City, The Good Wife, Broad City, Scandal, and The Mindy Project (to name just a few) that are readily bingeable, we see a multitude of representations of strong female voices and perspectives that allow the viewer to get into the heads of different kinds of women in different situations. Apparently for one showrunner, however, it’s not just women’s heads he think we should get into, but also their vaginas. Literally.

Let me explain. My latest binge watch was TV Land’s Younger, recently created by Sex and The City showrunner Darren Star. I have great things to say about this cute and funny show, which addresses the social and career struggles of women on two different sides of the ageism spectrum. One episode, however, made me raise an eyebrow. In ‘Girl Code,‘ (season one, episode five) we see Kelsey (Hilary Duff) squirming in her seat in a conference meeting, whispering to her friend and colleague Liza (Sutton Foster) about being in pain. We find out that Kelsey’s “Goddess Cup” is “stuck,” “launching an unsanctioned air strike attack on [her] cervix.” (For those of you playing at home, the “cup” Kelsey is referring to is TV Land’s version of a “Diva Cup:” a reusable, bell-shaped menstrual cup that is worn internally, collecting rather than absorbing menstrual flow. Now that we’re all caught up, let’s move on.)

Later on in the lady’s room, Kelsey recruits Liza to help her get it out, and after a few uncomfortable beats, Liza agrees. The situation is not that crazy, but it’s what happened a few scenes later that rubbed me the wrong way.

Kelsey brings up the incident later on at a bar, toasting to Liza’s efforts. After Liza proclaims she thought they would never speak of it again, Kelsey raises her shot glass and says “It’s kind of a big deal though, welcome to the inner circle Liza” and they toast to being “friends for life.” I played the scene back in disbelief. This is episode five of the series. The characters had already been through alot together, like working together to achieve success out of tough work situations, and standing up for one another when treated disrespectfully. But it’s only after Liza physically retrieved Kelsey’s Goddess Cup out from inside of her that their bond was officially sealed? I found the situation to be a bit of a step back for an otherwise progressive show, but didn’t think much of it after that. That is until I rewatched Darren Star’s other claim to fame, Sex and the City.

I decided to rewatch all seasons of SATC a few weeks later since I enjoyed Younger so much and it came out of the mind of the same showrunner. I have seen many episodes in the series before, so I kept it on as kind of a background binge. That is until ‘The Cheating Curve,’ (Season 2, Episode 6) where I stopped dead in my tracks to give the episode my full attention. In this episode, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) secretly gets back together with Mr. Big (Chris Noth), gets her diaphragm stuck, and recruits her friends to help her get it out. Seeing that I had just noticed a similar situation happen in Star’s latest show Younger, I busted out a Carrie-like bit of narrative alone in my room and said: “I had to wonder. Do TV show creators think the only way women can bond with each other is by physically reaching inside each other’s vaginas?”

In this particular episode, the diaphragm problem was used more as a device to reveal Carrie’s secret affair with Big to her friends than a moment of a display of female friendship. But in the same vagina-centric episode, the other characters’ subplots have to do with similar ridiculous vaginal bonding, especially Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis.) In “The Cheating Curve,” Charlotte makes friends with a group of lesbians interested in purchasing art from her gallery. In multiple scenes Charlotte points out how much she enjoys being around smart and successful women whose careers, lives, and conversations aren’t dominated by thoughts of men. That is until Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) tell her she must reveal her sexual orientation to her new friends, because the possibility of the lesbian group finding her attractive could be the only reason they continue to invite her to events. The issue comes to a head when Charlotte is addressed by one of her new gay friends who basically says Charlotte’s thoughts on the group are all very well and nice “but if you’re not going to eat pussy” …you can’t sit with us.

I have many problems with this subplot that relate to the same issues in the scene in Younger. But more on that in a minute. Darren Star’s vaginal subplots are far from the first time we’ve seen events like this transpire on big and small screens:

• In Comedy Central’s Broad City, Ilana finds it odd that Abbey finds it extremely odd that she carries her marijuana in a bag in her vagina. Ilana refers to it as “nature’s pocket,” and calls it natural and responsible.
• In this summer’s hit film, Trainwreck, Amy Schumer’s character shocks a group of conservative women by talking about a time she got a condom stuck in her cervix.
• In Netflix’s Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, the camp’s nurse has a charitable moment when she lends Lindsay (Elizabeth Banks) her diaphragm, which she is currently wearing, right there on the spot, only to have it returned to her later in the same manner. (Because that’s what friends do?)

In each of these instances, the situation is used as a comedic device. It’s funny! It happens! It’s 2015 and we can talk about what goes in (and sometimes doesn’t come out of) our vaginas.

The problem for me lies in the depiction of this incident being a major factor in how women can bond with each other. In these situations, this body part is used as the most literal way for women to symbolize their deepening friendship. As we know, having a vagina is not the defining factor of what makes a woman, and there are so many other factors that women identify with among each other that make them feel like they can connect.

I find this very specific (and literal!) bonding situation to be similarly troubling to the reasons why we have the Bechdel Test in the first place. As a refresher, the Bechdel Test “asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.” In our situation, I think we can replace “something other than a man” to “anything other than a woman asking another one to reach inside of her.”  According to NPR reporter Neda Ulaby in an interview with Alison Bechdel herself, the Bechdel test is still used and important today because “it articulates something often missing in popular culture: not the number of women we see on screen, but the depth of their stories, and the range of their concerns.” Therefore, I find it disturbing that it’s 2015 and we’re still seeing that “the depth of their stories, and the range of their concerns” only goes cervix-deep.

So, time for some real talk. Lesbians, of course, can be friends with straight women for the less-than-physical reasons Charlotte cites in ‘Cheating Curve,’ Carrie’s friends probably would have been supportive of her rekindled relationship with big without having to literally find the evidence of it inside of her, and Liza and Kelsey could have been “friends for life” for many other notable reasons than the one stuck in a Goddess Cup. We’ve come a long way in the ways we write about and view the complicated and ever changing definitions of femininity on TV, which makes me wonder why we’re still seeing this bizarre and very literal form of female bonding continually popping up on screen. Perhaps we need to shout it from gynecological offices everywhere: “Darren Star, we don’t need to reach inside of each other to be friends!”