Casual Sex in the Media: No Strings Attached & Friends with Benefits

 In the past 10 years, there has been major culture shift on perceptions of sex-based relationships. Sex-based relationships among young adults has increased drastically, making it practically normal to participate in a sex-based relationship at least once, in a person’s lifetime. These types of relationships have become so mainstream, that you can find dialogues about sex based relationships in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Elle, the New York Times, and other well known and widely read medias. I’m very excited because in 2011 there are going to be two movies coming out about the experiences of a sex-based relationships, one called No Strings Attached, with Aston Kucher and Natalie Portman; and the other called Friends with Benefits, with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. The funny thing is these two movies are very similar, and come out within months from each other, but the good thing, about these movies, is that they are not centered on the college scene (which is where most of the research focused, making it seem as though causal sex only happens in college), but instead the characters are professional young adults, living regular lives.

 I’m excited to watch both of these movies to see how they portray these casual sex relationships, especially since this is what I plan to study for my thesis. I would like to see how they go about handling negotiations around sex, other partners, and their relationship as a whole. I hope these movies creates more positive dialogues around casual sex so we can learn more about the ins and outs of the different casual sex realtionships.  

No Strings Attached

Friends with Benefits