With the hype that was created around Season 2 of Euphoria, I couldn’t help but reflect on other teen dramas and how they affect their audiences. As the years pass, the more I see the gap between kid and teen TV shows slowly disappearing as we witness the extinction of the “tween”.According to Healthline, “A tween (pre-teen) is a child who’s between the stages of childhood and adolescence. It’s this ‘in-between’ stage that the name ‘tween’ is derived from.”
Going from cartoons and innocent Disney Channel shows to these shows that are packed with underage sex, violence, drugs, suicide and sexual assault is a rapid change in subject matter for teenagers.
There seems to be an absence of an “in-between” for these tweens. But it wasn’t always like that. Up until late 1990s, sex was still relatively taboo in media, especially in more family-friendly shows made for teenagers.
Sitcoms at the time dealt with lighter issues as they mostly relied on comedy. But in the first run of Beverly Hills, 90210, which is considered a drama, the majority of the characters we’re not having sex, despite being in high school. Even in Friends, where the characters are all adults, sex is somewhat taboo.
Today, we see high school characters being sexually active, and sometimes with multiple partners, engaging in underage drinking and, as seen in the latest hit teen show Euphoria, even part-taking in sex work. Although some of these can ring true to some teenagers, they do not encompass the average teen experience in North America.
Overall, so many teen shows rely on the same tropes and fail their young audiences as they portray unrealistic representations, which I argue to be dangerous for teens.
With the public being more and more aware of the experiences of child actors in Hollywood, we can argue that casting adults to play older teenagers is a good step in the right direction.
However, it can affect our perception of what is appropriate or not.
As mentioned above, teen dramas are being packed with A LOT of sex. These scenes are between two consensual adult actors, but are supposed to be interpreted as two clueless and curious teenagers who, quite frankly, cannot give consent.
This is without even mentioning the problem of the dominating heteronormative experience represented in these shows.
Not only do these scenes set unrealistic standards for teens, but can also be dangerous in spreading misinformation.
The topic of sex is romanticized and almost never shown as multi-faceted. Have you ever seen the characters of a teen drama stop mid-makeout to put on a condom or do you ever see them get tested for STDs? We barely see the sweat, the awkward positions or faces, and there is always some sexy music to make the whole process seem anything but awkward.
I’m sorry for breaking anyone’s bubble, but sex, especially your first time, is nothing glamorous or romantic. Netflix’s Sex Education does a good job at representing what most would consider a real teen experience, especially regarding their sex life.
In a scene where the protagonist, Otis (Asa Butterfield) is about to lose his virginity, his partner Lily (Tanya Reynolds) starts awkwardly dancing in a training bra. Although the scene starts off as hilarious, it develops into Otis’ past trauma resurfacing and hindering him from getting it on.
There should be space for more explicit content on teen dramas as these experiences are real and should not be silenced or deemed too taboo. Still, there is a fine line between giving a platform to controversial subjects and romanticizing them.
The first thing coming to mind is the sadly popular trope of student-teacher relationships in teen dramas, present in Gossip Girl, Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars to name a few.
Student-teacher relationships romanticize something inappropriate and predatorial. It’s weird and I have a hard time understanding who these representations of power imbalance relationships are supposed to pander to. If the intended audience is middle and high schoolers, then I don’t think showing these as nothing else but abusive is safe.
In Pretty Little Liars, one of the main characters Aria (Lucy Hale) is dating her teacher and, spoiler alert, ends up marrying him. Not only did the show do a poor job at representing this as an issue, but they also encouraged the romanticization of the couple. Watching these student-teacher relationships on-screen might not seem too inappropriate because the actors playing them are most likely of similar age. This serves as another example of the problem of casting adults to play teenagers: they have adult bodies. These actors have past puberty and are now in fully grown adult bodies that mostly fit the western beauty standards and that are more easily sexualized. Not only does this lead teenagers to compare themselves to adults, but to conventionally attractive adults. This also means they have reached a level of comfort in their bodies that typical teens wouldn’t normally display. This can be seen in their movement, stance, and use of space.
A strip-tease given by Gossip Girl character Blair (Leighton Meester), 17, who is also suffering from an eating disorder, depicts more of a young confident adult than a teenager discovering herself. Dressed in a full lingerie set, including a garter belt and stockings, Blair’s character makes your average mismatched underwear-wearing teen look subpar. Again, hiring older actors is not always the problem, but dressing them as adults while trying to convince your audience they are running late for a high school class is problematic.
Just by looking at the wardrobes of Riverdale, 90210 and Gossip Girl, it is easy to guess the actors are adults.
And while we’re at it, here’s a note for the makeup artists: let’s normalize acne in teen dramas.
I’m not only here to critique though. Shows like 13 Reasons Why, Sex Education and Skins, for that matter, are the ones doing it right.
Although Skins can be criticized for exaggerating teens’ exposure to drugs, alcohol and partying and is sometimes compared as the older sibling to Euphoria, the casual way the characters are engaging in under-age drinking can also mess with viewers’ perception of these substances. The teen drama genre is dealing more and more with young adult topics such as drugs, alcohol and partying. They are also responsible for glamorizing other teen issues such as eating disorders, sexual assault, suicide and teen pregnancy.
So why do these shows need to be set in high schools anyway? The plots and the characters could stay the same as the high school setting most likely brings nothing to the storyline.
It feels gross and exploitative that middle-aged male executives and writers in Hollywood find pertinent to place teenage characters in highly inappropriate situations.
This growing change in the teen drama genre in TV and the ethics behind casting adult actors results in the extinction of “tweens” as we know them and the over-sexualization of teenage hood. This results in tweens jumping from watching shows where the climax of a relationship is a first kiss to watching teens getting it on every other episode, with sometimes even multiple partners.
Fashion writer
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