What Off Campus can teach us about centring women’s pleasure

The hit romantic drama series reached 36 million viewers globally in its first 12 days. (Supplied: Prime Video) Link copiedShareShare articleIf you've been left wanting more after finishing the final episode of Off Campus, you're probably in good company. The hit romantic drama series reached 36 million viewers globally within its first 12 days, with season two already in the works. The show's creators have been praised for rewriting the narrative on love, centring women's pleasure and showing us on screen what healthy masculinity and the "bare minimum" effort in relationships can look like. But Off Campus also navigates some heavier themes, including sexual assault and trauma. Before we dive into it, this is your official spoiler alert. The Off Campus series, based on the popular novel The Deal, by Elle Kennedy, focuses on a blossoming love affair between college students Hannah Wells and ice hockey captain Garrett Graham. While the fake relationship storyline between the two characters is nothing new, the show's writers have carefully featured "sex positive and inclusive" themes, which are "empowering for everyone," according to sexologist and clinical psychologist Lauren French. Off Campus has become an epic hit. (Supplied: Prime Video) "In this show they keep the messiness … they keep in the fact that there are vulnerabilities, that there are issues that people are dealing with," she says. "Sex isn't just passion against a wall or boring missionary behind the sheets, it actually goes, 'No, this is exciting, erotic, really desirable, pleasurable sex.' "There are conflicts that [they] want to resolve and I think the show is holding all of those things in a really measured way." Even though the plot is centred around characters who are barely out of high school, the show has struck a chord with a much wider audience. Soon after Off Campus's release, social media was awash with reels of middle-aged women gushing over the main character, Garrett, reminding themselves that they are indeed married with children and reflecting on whether they should be fantasising about a college student. But what is it about this show that has so many of us hot under the collar? Sexologist and Griffith University associate professor Armin Ariana says it's all about Garrett's constant focus on providing emotional safety for Hannah. The series has been praised as a non-toxic exploration of romance. (Liane Hentscher/Prime) "Being a male character who is present and who's being guided by the female, that is wonderful," Dr Ariana says. "This is what I constantly teach to men, because male sexual concern mostly comes from that idea of performance. They think, 'I have to rock in this bed, and I have to do this and I have to do that.' In one scene, Garrett asks a male friend and fellow hockey player for advice about female orgasms, to which the friend replies: "Trust — she's got to feel completely safe and relaxed … nothing is more vulnerable than sex, and don't skimp on the foreplay". Ms French says it's this narrative and vulnerability that many of us find "really attractive". "It didn't set up the kind of usual trope, which is, 'Here's a technique,'" she says. "It went, 'Actually it's trust, vulnerability, [and] how do we set that up safely?' "I think it also highlighted a moment of vulnerability between very macho, stereotypical, sporty, masculine men that we also don't see." Viewers were not disappointed after the pep talk — Garrett understood the assignment. It leads to very steamy scenes centring Hannah's comfort, pleasure and wellbeing. Ms French, who is also an educator in consent and respectful relationships, describes Garrett's focus on Hannah's comfort as "refreshing". Lauren French says the male vulnerability in the show is part of what makes it "really attractive". (Supplied: Lauren French) "Who's the actual person that makes us feel like we're exhaling? That person we can melt into and that it's not all tension and high-excitement energy," she says. "[Watching it] is actually like a big warm hug — with some hot sex." There is a good reason that emotional and physical safety between the two characters features so heavily, as both grapple with individual experiences of abuse and trauma. In Hannah's case, that was being sexually assaulted in high school. According to Ellie Freedman, a sexual health physician based in Sydney/Gadigal, storylines about safety and vulnerability are "incredibly helpful" for victim-survivors of abuse or those who may have experienced any form of unsafe sex. She describes unsafe sex as "sex that just doesn't feel good or right or that they don't feel in control of, because lots of people aren't going to name that as an assault". Seeing it dealt with so sensitively on screen may also help those of us in a relationship or friendship with someone who's experienced assault "because people often don't know how to approach it", Dr Freedman says. Hannah's healing journe

What Off Campus can teach us about centring women’s pleasure

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