Adult Actors, Teen Characters, And A Whole Load Of Uncomfortable Sex Scenes
29 year old Olivia Newton John playing 17 year old Sandy in Grease, 25 year old Rachel McAdams playing high schooler Regina George, 31 year old Bianca Lawson playing Maya St.Germain — a character more than a decade younger than her in Pretty Little Liars.
Casting 20-something-year-olds in teenage roles has perpetuated outright unattainable teenage beauty standards for decades. The impossible beauty of teenage characters in film and TV has built an aspirational vision of the teen, one that represents an incredibly limited range of acceptable physical characteristics, one that can near never be reached by the real life teenager.
Seeing teenage girls in film with perfect skin and perfect hair can be easily brushed off as being aesthetically pleasing and you could argue that people want those girls in film to idolise and emulate. But when the average teen experience is at best beset by zits and never quite pulling off the perfect messy bun, the depiction of teenage girls as perfect mini-adults is adding pressure to people at a time where pressure is already rampant.
Placing grown, adult women into the roles of bumbling prebubecent teens has very real consequences for both how adults conceive typical adolescence, and how teens measure themselves against it. Visualising actual teenagers in many of the situations these adult actors are placed in is outright uncomfortable — older actors can perform the kinds of sexual situations that provide much of the drama in teen narratives, without raising ethical concerns or making adult viewers squirm. For example, Pacey Witter was a mere 15 when he started sleeping with his teacher on Dawson’s Creek, but Joshua Jackson, 19, was above the age of consent.
The age gap between an actor and their character also adds to the believability of a storyline. On Gossip Girl, the very adult sex life of 16-year-old Chuck Bass seems far more plausible when portrayed by Ed Westwick, aged 20 during the show’s debut. Though these storylines play to shock the audience and draw them into the drama, what they’re really doing is normalising un-healthy teenage behaviour that is more the not-normal and, in some cases, illegal!
One of the biggest questions surrounding many of these teenage storylines is, ‘why not simply make them two years older?’. Do we actually want to watch actors portraying 16 year olds having sex on TV? The argument was made many times, specifically after the airing of Euphoria. Take the characters out of high school and put them into the college/university setting. You take away the fact that you’re watching minors drinking, doing drugs, and having sex while they simultaneously navigate education. Now you can rest in the fact you’re watching people above the age of consent doing those things.
When we watch these adult actors doing drugs, drinking, going out to clubs, engaging in sexual activity it doesn’t look strange at all, because these actors are not kids. In reality if a 16 year old walked into a club you’d realise right away and it would be uncomfortable to any (decent) surrounding adults. As someone who has lived through teenage years and experienced what life through that time is actually like, watching these shows you can easily decipher between the fantasy version of experience, and the raw depictions of teenage struggle. Viewers who have not yet reached this age do not know what much of their coming life will look like, so it’s much harder for them to separate the dramatised from the real.
Many shows have, and still do, rely on scandalous teenage relationship drama to rake in views, but some just take it a few steps too far. One such show was Pretty Little Liars. The show has many an issue, one of the more worrying being the flippancy of pairing underage girls in romantic relationships with grown men — bringing into question the writer’s stance on *cough* statutory rape *cough*.
The show is the most prominent example of what not to do when; one depicting an adult in a teenage role, and two, giving said teenage character a questionable romantic storyline. Aria Montgomary’s relationship with her teacher, Ezra, was beyond wildly inappropriate but it didn’t look that way because Lucy Hale was in-fact only three years younger than the actor playing her teacher.
Aria was only 16 when she began ‘dating’Ezra — that alone is creepy. Ezra previously had ‘hooked up’ with Aria’s friend, 15-year-old Ali, until the night she disappeared. Somehow, even though this grown man had surveillance cameras watching his ‘girlfriend’ and her friends, all of whom were still in high school, the only people who ever had concerns about the relationship were Aria’s parents, and even they gave in! Forward through a few seasons and the pair get married — with Ezra receiving no real consequence for dating an underage pupil. The characters love him, the writers love him, the fans love him.
If you don’t spend a lot of time around young teenagers, you may not be able to easily recall what a 16-year-old actually looks like. Seeing 20-something-year-old Lucy Hale with another 20-something-year-old actor, doesn’t show just how unfathomable it would be for a man in his 30s to have anything even approaching a consensual sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl.
TV shows, film, social media; all influence how young people believe they should behave. Young people remember situations that the media present; unless they are counselled otherwise, they tend to accept them as the norm. This is particularly prevalent when talking about sex.
These media depictions are shaping the minds of teens, often being the most raw and open dialogue sharing ideas of pleasure, power, and intimacy. In the UK, one in seven people aged 16–24 received no formal sex education and an appalling 95% never learnt about consent. With Gen-Z having access to more TV shows and films than any other generation before them, and with social media dominating their everyday lives in a way not possible for previous generations, the creators of this teenage aimed content need to constantly consider exactly how they’re portraying sex.
A testament to the power of television in educating teens about safe sex is a 2003 episode of Friends. Rachel finds out she’s pregnant, despite using a condom, which shocks Ross who wasn’t aware that the contraceptive method isn’t 100% effective at preventing pregnancy. A study following this episode found that 65% of the viewers aged between 12 and 17, confirmed recalling the show’s information about condom-effectiveness and 10% of the viewers engaged in active conversations about contraception as a direct result.
You could argue that a lot of sexual relationships in these teen shows are only minor parts of bigger storylines but whenever you depict teens having sex, and when your audience is young, the responsibility is there. Writers need to recognise their extreme influence over their audience and use their influence in a beneficial way.
