Wait, Is Jennifer Lawrence Grossed Out by Sex?
Jennifer Lawrence, America’s favorite Cool Girl, may jump over theater seats while holding a glass of wine and get McDonald's fries delivered straight to the red carpet, but in a recent conversation with The Sun, she talks about being a lot less chill when it comes to her sex life.
“I always talk like I want dick, but the truth is, when I look back at my sexual past, it was always with boyfriends,” she explained to the paper. And her reasoning has less to do with serial monogamy than it does with…being kind of grossed out? “I am mostly a germaphobe,” she said. If she gets to the point in a sexual encounter where STI transmission is possible, “doctors have already been involved,” she said, meaning she has asked her partner to get tested.
Can’t disagree with you there, Jennifer: Women (and men) should feel comfortable asking their partners about their sexual health. Knowledge is power in these situations. And sometimes getting that knowledge means literally dragging that guy you like to the clinic for a test before jumping in the sack. So be it.
Where she begins to lose me, though, is implying that by keeping her sex life within the confines of committed relationships, she’s somehow ensuring safety (from germs). Lawrence—and anyone who operates on a serial-monogamy M.O.—should know that STIs are out there, and prevention behooves all of us. By calling herself a “germaphobe,” to explain that “dick is dangerous,” Lawrence implies that casual sex is dirty.
The CDC estimates that there are nearly 20 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections every year, and that nearly every sexually active person without an HPV vaccine will contract it in their lifetime. This can lead to genital warts and even cervical cancer in women, without having presented with any symptoms in a male sexual partner. And unfortunately for Lawrence, even though there is a vaccination for certain strains of HPV, since it is spread from skin-to-skin contact, it isn’t fully prevented by condoms (amazing as they are, they don’t cover everything). And, to poke a bit of a hole in her germaphobe-safety protocol: There’s no way for males to be tested for it. In short, your hand-sanitizer addiction is kind of a non-sequitur in the bedroom.
But that doesn’t mean we should all cower in fear of ever getting it on. As John Oliver addressed on Last Week Tonight back in 2015, preaching abstinence likens people who have sex to a dirty shoe, a chewed-up piece of gum, or a piece of tape that has lost its stickiness. Fast-forward three years, and Jennifer Lawrence, patron saint of chill-ass girls, is promoting that same backward thinking by saying, essentially, "Ew, sex germs!"
The idea persists that people who engage in casual sex are messy or irresponsible. What they really are, though, is people who want to have sex. Full stop. But Lawrence’s comments, no matter how lightly intended, come off like she’s holding onto these antiquated notions of propriety.
And seriously, taking steps to protect your sexual health isn’t just for those in committed relationships. Anyone can ask a potential hookup for the receipts on their last round of testing. Sometimes people contract infections anyway; that doesn’t mean they should be shipped off to an island or deemed unworthy of ever catching a lay again.
Some illnesses can be treated and recovered from, others can be managed, and we’ve all got access to an arsenal of safer sex tools to use—all while enjoying as freaky a sex life as we please.
