While we often talk about cult classics such as the 50 Shades trilogy or even Monster’s Ball, we rarely make room for the sexiest yet most underrated content out there. And, let me keep it all the way real – it's the lightweight pornographic content that doesn’t leave much to the imagination. With that in mind, don’t be alarmed when you don’t see the obvious here! Although there isn’t much, there are more than a few hot indie-ish or less known films to go around.
Here are 7 of the movies and TV shows you can stream on either (mostly) Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon the next time you’re in the mood to heat things up and want some decent porn playing in the background.
1. 365 Days
Without saying too much about the plot itself – which I’m surprised I even managed to recall being that I was so caught up in the rapture – I was more afraid of losing the main characters in this erotic thriller because what would I do if they weren’t fucking anymore. Though the sex scenes aren’t quite as frequent in 365 Days, they are lengthy and explicit in all the right places. Thumbs up, Netflix!
2. 365 Days: This Day
365 Days: This Day is the sequel to the previously mentioned steamy entry and can also be found on Netflix. It has the right idea about how porn should be – less scripted talking and more sex scenes set to decent music. Though the sex scenes aren’t as intense as they were in the first film, the sex is more indulgent. Every five minutes there’s music, some raunchy foreplay, and lots of fucking! And the sex scenes are so good and so convincing that I’m not entirely sure that the actors playing Massimo and Laura are actually having sex.
3. The Voyeurs
GiphyWatch them watching others do wild things in this racy movie found on Amazon Prime Video. In The Voyeurs, you get a surprisingly secondhand account of what it’s like to watch the sex you fantasize about with Euphoria star, Sydney Sweeney. Within the first five minutes, I was ready to run and retrieve my vibrator.
4. Deep Water
At first, I thought nothing more than, 'Gosh, not Ben Affleck being typecast to the thriller movies where he has a psycho wife.' And though it does appear to be this way, this Hulu Original was no Gone Girl. However, what Deep Water lacks in a decent plot, it makes up for with its intense sex scenes – especially if you’re someone interested in voyeurism.
5. Wild Things
After stumbling across this 1998 psycho-thriller on Netflix, it easily made the cut for its surprisingly erotic nature. Keep in mind, Wild Things is set in the 90s so not quite as pornographic as it might’ve been had it been filmed now. But it was oddly sexy and that infamous threesome scene between Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, and Neve Campbell is iconic for a reason.
6. Bridgerton
The last time I mentioned Netflix’s Bridgerton, I almost got myself in hot water when I suggested that season two was even remotely close to season one. With that in mind, I will specify that season one of this Netflix original provided some hot sex between the main characters, Daphne and the Duke. Don't say I didn't warn you.
7. Sex/Life
Netflix's Sex/Life reminded me of the early 2000s movie Unfaithful with Richard Gere and Diane Lane but it gave so much more. The main character (played by Sarah Shahi), who is a bored housewife, is actually far more developed in that we get to know more of the person she was before marriage. In learning that, we also get glimpses of her free-spirited sex life prior to marriage. What makes this one stand out from the rest of the list is that I was equally invested in the hot sex scenes just as much as the actual plot. Win, win.
With a summer full of heat on this list, be sure to take heed when watching these movies! In fact, do yourself a favor and put your vibrator on the arm of your couch so it’s as easily accessible as it will need to be. Promise!
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Featured GIF via Netflix
Well, that’s further evidence of my belief that this world is out to get women, especially those who stray from social norms in any shape or form. However, our society has a long-standing history of holding women accountable for the sins or wrongdoing of men.
Time and time again, history has demonstrated that women are expected to not only be pure, holier than thou beings but that when men go astray it is because the woman in his life was a stray arrow. I first learned of this concept in regards to sexuality, but it’s clear like many other aspects of life, that it has a trickle-down impact. Twitter critics came out in droves to crucify Jada because it was speculated that she gave Will a look signaling him to defend her honor, then again because of previous clips of her speaking on their relationship dynamic.
People used this as an opportunity to support their previous arguments that Jada was toxic because she as a woman should’ve willed Will to sit his ass down. They used inaccurate clickbait to have the public believe she had actually spoken against her husband, when in fact, all quotes have been from previous dialogues. While I would love to make this a Black woman issue, this is a woman issue!
This does not negate the fact that this phenomenon may take different shapes when experienced by Black women or be more complicated to navigate. In conversation with xoNecole, Psycho-Historian Shannon Hannaway notes how “blame has historically been shifted to Black women even in instances where the power dynamic in no way reflects the verbiage – even in modern times it is used to describe the events of the past.”
She further highlights Thomas Jefferson and his abusive relationship with Sally Hemings, which has never actually been stated that way in history books. To Hannaways’s point Hemmings, who was a Black slave, is often described as the dead president's “mistress” rather than “a survivor of sexual assault and abuse.”
While purity culture started out as a concept relegated to WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), I believe respectability politics played a role in Black women attempting to maintain these social constructs no matter how impossible it was due to the controlling images that continued to make a mockery of Black women’s attempts to successfully integrate amongst white women in this way (and many others).
Hannaway says, “Purity culture is very much so a WASP concept, although there are variations throughout the history of this idea, the version we know today in the United States is a direct result of the Cult of Domesticity – a movement that began between 1820 and 1860. To be pure and good was a status symbol for wealthy white women, absolute virtue was a sign of this status and women’s role in keeping the home, raising children, and acting in accordance with purity and goodness.”
“Traditional” womhanood is a farce. Because the femininity script folk speak of when they talk about feminity is a farce created to elevate white women. The purity, piety, domesticity and submissiveness. It is a script.
— Ava Anointing (@SoualiganAmazon) July 25, 2020
However, she pinpoints the tipping point and significant difference as it pertains to the racial piece of our intersectional identities being that “...at this same time slavery was still legal, and even after the Civil War, Black women experienced a shift from formal slavery to near-slavery in the homes of wealthy white women and in fact did a majority of home-keeping behind closed doors.”
Hannaway goes on to add, “White women were afforded the privilege to act in accordance with the Cult of Domesticity, whereas Black women and their families were expected and in fact still considered less than despite the end of slavery. Black women did not have the privilege of spending time with their own families, and [were] blamed for their inability to shift careers and be present in their families. Historically Black people have been treated in accordance with white colonial belief systems that commodify bodies and remove personhood, shifting moral righteousness to white people.”
This circles back to my initial point of Black women being held and expected to maintain the same standards as white women, as they are the pinnacle of purity and exemplify the behaviors that we Black women ought to mimic – yet constantly finding our best imitation to be unacceptable merely because of our Brown hues and the status attached to it.
Hannaway continues, “In the world we live in, men and women are socialized in a way that removes the blame from men and places a disproportionate amount of responsibility on women starting at an early age. Research reflects that as early as elementary school, the notion that boys are underachievers and girls are compliant and responsible begins. This is reinforced from then on every day, as children become teenagers and later adults, these roles within society become reinforced until they are locked in.”
We see it everywhere from the home to the boardroom, where Hannaway says women CEOs are held to more grave consequences than men if and when they fail. And even outside of the company, consumers are less likely to continue to allocate their money in the face of an error made by a woman CEO – further speaking to the collective socialization.
And of course, there are religious roots because aren’t there always?
“Women are even tasked with ‘changing’ men and this is a trope seen in even recent movies such as Failure to Launch, The Kissing Booth, Twilight, to name a few: of note, these are all films with a predominantly young, female audience," Hannaway adds.
I would argue that the sentiment of changing men and controlling, er, reining them in when their behavior is not in alignment with white colonial standards fall within the same vein. You see, apparently, it was more telling of Jada Pinkett Smith’s morality and virtue that she wasn’t able to predict her husband's next move and use some type of X-Men-like superpower to shift his mood for the greater good of humanity.
I am exhausted by this narrative that @jadapsmith is the reason for #Willsmith behavior. She’s not responsible for his behavior or his actions.All the stupid videos on YouTube should the taken down. Jada should sue 4 the toxic & misogynistic things being said about her.
— Ase (@MelaninKemet) April 22, 2022
When I asked Hannaway to further explain the origin of holding women accountable for the actions of men, she shared an interesting finding. “These belief systems and accepted mythologies gave men the ability to blame women for lustful thoughts by association with the paranormal. When a woman was not Christian and white, this belief was even more likely to be acted upon in accordance with the idea that people of color without a Christian God worked with the Devil, and by causing sinful thoughts were surely to blame.”
Even more eye-opening and disheartening was the reality that Hannaway spoke on:
“The oppression of women has historically been a way for men to maintain power and control. It’s worth noting, that because of this societal structure present in the church and in governments, women’s voices have largely been silenced and erased in history. Additionally, women have been the target of violence in the name of assimilation. One argument that makes the most sense, is that women are human beings with the ability to create life and are necessary to the continuity of humanity. To control women is to control life itself. In matriarchal societies, this oppression does not occur in the way it does in patriarchal societies. In patriarchal societies like modern western civilization, women are commodified and objectified.”
Needless to say, there’s so much more to be said on this matter – all of which is interesting because it holds so much truth. Though we can’t possibly get into it all in this one piece, I hope that this raises the consciousness of people everywhere who have managed to perpetuate these acts of misogyny. If change begins with us, I think it’s critical that we as a culture begin to evaluate on an individual basis the way that we interact with patriarchal scripts.
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Featured image by Getty Images
