Social & Sexual Pressures Interact in “Easy A”

Easy A is a really fascinating film in terms of social norms, expectations, and behaviors surrounding sex. To give some context, here’s the movie trailer:

Clearly, there are a lot of different norms and expectations at play here, and there is a lot to discuss and analyze. I’ll try and keep it brief by talking about just a few concepts that come into play in Easy A.

 As you can see in the trailer, Olive – the main character, played by Emma Stone – is a high school student who pretends to have sex with her male peers in order to help them attain a better social standing and experience at school. Throughout the trailer, she is approached by several of her male classmates who want her to pretend to have sex with them so they’ll be more accepted by their peers. This practice exemplifies Chia & Gunther’s (2006) findings that “male students’ perceptions of other students’ attitudes predicted intention to engage in premarital sex … and that their perceived friends’ attitudes predicted intention to engage in casual sex” (314). I think the number of young men shown in the film who weren’t having sex, but felt that they should because others were doing so, really exemplifies this point. Perhaps many of Olive’s peers aren’t sexually active, but each young man clearly thinks his peers are more sexually active than he is. Furthermore, this social expectation actually changes their behavior and drives them to approach Olive in an effort to change their social status through “having sex.” This representation of sexual activity corresponds to two parts of what Kelly (2009) classifies as the “urgency” approach to virginity loss: “virginity as a stigma” and, when they seek to rectify their social standing, “desperation and deception” (485). For the young men in the movie, virginity loss is driven by a heavy social pressure rather than by self-motivated personal choice. 

Complicating the urgency script is Olive’s friend Brandon, who is the first one to pretend to have sex with her. He asks her for this favor not because of the pressure to lose his virginity, but because he feels he needs to pass as straight to be accepted. This actually refers to a different script from the urgency script of virginity loss that the other boys follow; Brandon’s social predicament follows the male-oriented homophobia script discussed by Kim et al (2007), which is the depiction of male homosexuality as feared and ridiculed, often treated as a joke (152). Easy A treats this script differently than most of the television shows surveyed for Kim et al’s study, because the film shows the effects of such ridicule while the study noted mostly homophobic sitcom jokes with no negative effects. However, it still depicts ridicule as a direct result of male homosexuality. In the trailer, Brandon says, “I’m tormented every day at school” and then asks for “just one good imaginary fling,” showing that his social experience suffers because of his rumored sexual orientation. To rid himself of the stigma associated with male homosexuality, he feels he needs to (pretend to) have sex with a woman.

I think it’s significant to point out that though the young men in the movie are affected by different sexual scripts, the solution for all of them is to have sex with a woman. This, in itself, is very telling of yet another script: sex as masculinity, which Kim et al (2007) defines as “depictions of sexuality being a defining component of men's masculinity (p. 150). This carries heavy implications that, if really acted upon in the real world – and I think they do to some extent – have the potential to harm both men and women. Men have little chance to think for themselves about whether or not they want to engage in sex outside of social pressure, and in these scripts women are little more than objects used to claim masculinity and manhood through sex.

Finally, there’s the image of Olive herself. She doesn’t feel pressure to lose her virginity, and the movie doesn’t really depict girls feeling that their peers are more sexually active than they are. She doesn’t stand out in any way before she “loses her virginity”; in the trailer, she begins her story by saying, “I used to be a nothing. Anonymous. Non-entity.”  So, while the boys are ridiculed for not having sex, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of repercussion or even recognition for girls. Instead, Olive’s social pressure comes up when she is shamed for being too sexually active. This corresponds with Chia & Gunther’s (2006) findings that women’s sexual behaviors are not significantly affected by their perceptions of their peers’ sexual behaviors (p. 314). The film’s treatment of Olive versus her male counterparts also clearly depicts the sexual double standard: premarital sex is celebrated for men, who are “characterized as being in a constant state of sexual desire,” but heavily policed and shamed for women, who need to practice “caution and discretion” above their own sexual desires (Ward, 2002, p. 356)

Rather than showing just one script, Easy A depicts many of sexual and relational scripts interacting with one another. It shows the different pressures constructed and perpetuated for men and women, as well as depicting multiple pressures within gender roles. While fulfilling its purpose of being a fun, dramatic teen movie, it clearly and intentionally showcases the sexual double standard.

References:

Chia, S. C., & Gunther, A. C. (2006). How media contribute to misperceptions of social norms about sex. Mass Communication & Society, 9(3), 301-320. doi: 10.1207/s15327825mcs0903_3

Kelly, M. (2010). Virginity loss narratives in “teen drama” television programs. Journal of Sex Research, 47(5), 479-489. doi: 10.1080/00224490903132044

Kim, J. L., Sorsoli, C. L., Collins, K., Zylbergold, B. A., Schooler, D., & Tolman, D. L. (2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research, 44(2), 145-157. doi: 10.1080/00224490701263660

Ward, L. M. (2003). Understanding the role of entertainment media in the sexual socialization of American youth: A review of empirical research. Developmental Review, 23(3), 347-388. doi: 10.1016/s0273-2297(03)00013-3