When a parent learns that their child is going to become a journalist, it is their greatest dream, one can imagine, for that child to one day write an entire story about people licking butts. So here I am, on the occasion of The Daily Beast’s month-long celebration of “Sextember” (get it?), writing a piece about what I mortifyingly pitched as “ass-eating on TV.” Mom has never been prouder.
Discourse surrounding sex and television has been around…forever. Classic TV series used to not even show a married couple’s bedroom. Lucille Ball’s fight to show her character pregnant on I Love Lucy was so hard-fought (pregnancy hints that intercourse happened!) that we got an entire, cringe-inducing Aaron Sorkin movie out of it.
Fast-forward decades, and I’ve seen culture wars waged surrounding bare bums being show on NYPD Blue, Donna Martin losing her virginity on Beverly Hills: 90210, the commodification of teen sexuality on Gossip Girl, the crass “sexposition” on Game of Thrones, just about every sex scene on Girls, how graphic or realistic to be about gay sex on TV, whether it’s appropriate to show an erect penis or an ejaculation, and the need for intimacy coordinators.
This is to say that seemingly every taboo about sex seems to have been mined: a cycle of provocation, pearl-clutching, and then normalization. That is, everything but what is known as, God help me, “eating ass.” Or, to give a hint at how seriously this has been taken over the years: what Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City jokingly referred to as “tuchus lingus.”
Depicting the act of “rimming” on TV actually isn’t that new. It’s just that it’s still incredibly rare, tends to occur on series that are on the fringes of mainstream culture, or, when it does happen on a show that’s in the zeitgeist, is treated with so much blushing shock-and-awe—sometimes even outrage—that it ends up morphing into a point of ridicule, instead of a depiction of a consensual sex act.
The first time I remember seeing this on screen was in 1999’s original British version of Queer as Folk—which is to say torrented on my family’s shared computer in the middle of the night at some point when I was in high school. The scene took place between stars Aidan Gillen and Charlie Hunnam, and was a crucial, quite beautiful part of Hunnam’s character’s sexual awakening.
Given the series’ quiet impact outside of the gay community in the United States, the scene went largely unnoticed. That is to say that it went unnoticed until more than a decade later, when Hunnam, who had then become the popular star of Sons of Anarchy, was, for a brief time, cast as Christian Grey in the film version of 50 Shades of Grey. Hunnam’s steamiest scenes from his previous work resurfaced in celebration of the casting, and the rimming scene from Queer as Folk stunned people.
Years later, they’re still stunned. Which is stunning to me. Even though the act has popped up sporadically over the years—and has, often, be extremely hot—there’s something about it that still seems to shake people’s nerves, even as much more explicit sex scenes air constantly on the very same shows.
Earlier this year, viewers were rattled when The Staircase, an HBO true-crime series based on the mystery surrounding the murder a real-life wife and mother, aired a scene in which Colin Firth performs analingus on Toni Collette.
Granted, part of the riotous response is likely owed to the fact that is was a gruesome crime drama, and the realistic depiction of a sex act deemed so non-traditional between a suburban husband and wife was the last thing people thought they’d be seeing in an episode of the series. But there was something to the fact that this was an act of pleasure between a married couple taking place in their bedroom, and the internet had a giggle fit about it.
That the action was still one of a culture taken aback is a little surprising, since it came in the wake of a major “ass-eating” scene that had, essentially, captured the attention of the nation after it aired on HBO’s The White Lotus several months prior.
The infamous scene takes place between Murray Bartlett and Lukas Gage, and is the catalyst for Bartlett’s character’s dramatic downfall. Most viewers, especially gay fans of the show who partake in and enjoy the act, were in disbelief that a series that had become so popular aired it.
As in many previous cases, it became a point of humor, because so many people were incapable of taking it seriously—and one could argue that cheekiness (heh) was intended by writer-director Mike White. It threatened to take over all other conversations surrounding the show, because it seemed like such a big deal. (Again, perhaps that was an intentional misdirection from White.) It was interesting to watch the scene become a moment, yet the act still be something considered so taboo in the aftermath.
Some people have started to brand HBO “TV’s ass-eating network,” and they wouldn’t be wrong. Most of the act’s history on TV exists only on HBO.
When the TV movie version of Looking aired, it seemed like a pointed choice for the first sex scene to be Jonathan Groff’s character rimming Michael Rosen as foreplay to anal sex. It was hot. It reflected typical behavior between same-sex couples. It wasn’t framed for shock value, but in a rather normalized way.
That was refreshing, given the previous example in an episode of Girls. On the one hand, when Ebon Moss-Bacharach’s character is eating out Allison Williams’ character, she is clearly experiencing intense pleasure. Both characters are very into it. But because of the sexual politics that surrounded Girls at the time, and the way audiences interacted with the discourse, many viewers saw the airing of the scene to be a way of demeaning the character of Marnie. At the time, most fans hated the character, and this was considered to be a way of humiliating her, that it was something to be ashamed of.
That tone, interestingly enough, is a direct descendant of how the act was talked about on Sex and the City a generation earlier. The notorious “tuchus eating” storyline centered around Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda, who is startled when, during a hookup, he starts to rim her without warning. As was always the fun of Sex and the City, she brings it up to her friends at brunch. They talk about it frankly and all have differing opinions about it—but also make fun of it.
I’m not sure if, in the end, the way Miranda treats the act in the bedroom when she is asked to participate in it is shame, per se. But there is a tinge of disgust. Which is fair! But when it’s the rare time it’s even discussed, let alone shown, on TV, that’s a notable stance to take.
There is still only one example, at least that I can remember or am aware of, in which this was shown or alluded to on broadcast TV. In the pilot episode of How to Get Away With Murder, Shonda Rhimes and co-creator Peter Nowalk took a wrecking ball to traditional boundaries and constraints and aired a brief scene in which Jack Falahee’s character hooks up with Conrad Ricamora’s and goes down on him from behind.
It was groundbreaking at the time, in 2014—and is still groundbreaking eight years later. It hasn’t happened on broadcast since.
The conversation surrounding sex and TV is neverending. But this is one that still seems brushed to the side, as if no one’s comfortable acknowledging the reality of it. But as provocation and progress are, as ever, marching orders as the TV boom continues to explode, one can’t help but wonder, to once again evoke Carrie Bradshaw, if “tuchus lingus” is the next frontier.
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