Planet Sex offers a world of enlightenment
Don’t know your asexuality from your pansexuality? Think a Spectrum is a British computer from the 1980s? Struggling to comprehend ‘‘the rainbow’’ when it’s already developed into ‘‘a cornucopia of colours’’?
Then this might just be the entertainingly enlightening show for you.
Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne sees the British model turned actor (Tulip Fever, Carnival Row) take a deep dive into the increasingly dizzying and diverse world of self-identity, sexual orientation and pleasure-seeking.
While fully admitting to being a ‘‘privileged Western white woman’’, the vivacious and delightfully self-deprecating Delevingne firmly believes stardom has helped contribute to her own sex life, relationships and even gender identification being ‘‘all a bit of a hot mess’’.
‘‘I was born female, but I often feel like a guy,’’ the now 30-yearold says, before admitting that she’s still battling ‘‘internal shame’’ and ‘‘homophobia’’ about being attracted to other women and has never felt able to have a ‘‘queer life’’. ‘‘When you’re famous, it stunts a lot of things.’’
While the host opens up about feeling abnormal earlier in her life (‘‘the more I denied my homosexuality, the more I hated myself’’), Planet Sex is not dominated by navel-gazing. Instead, it’s a handy primer on the difference between gender and sexual orientation (the first is
‘‘how you feel inside’’, the second ‘‘who you fancy’’) and a journey of discovery that aims to ask questions like: is monogamy dead? What makes us hot – or not? And how can we get our hands on more orgasms?
Later episodes promise to focus on the orgasm gap between men and women, the fluidity of gender, attempts to change pornography’s traditional perspective, why people cheat and our ideas about what is beautiful. However, the opening instalment see Delevingne catching up with people from around the world who are out – and proud.
They include a Berlin-based Syrian performance artist, a Japanese Buddhist monk who is also a makeup artist, and attendees at Palm Springs’ annual Dinah Shore Weekend, an event known affectionately as ‘‘Disneyland for lesbians’’.
There’s also time for mythbusting from University of Essex psychologist and sexologist Dr Gerulf Rieger (who believes sexual orientation is usually determined well before ‘‘overbearing mothers, boarding schools, older sisters or being in the navy’’) and a visit to
Maastricht University psychologist and sexologist Dr Marieke Dewitte’s sex lab.
It’s there that Delevingne frets about her parents watching a show where her arousal is monitored while she’s shown pornography.
‘‘Try not to touch yourself – and have fun,’’ Dewitte cheerfully advises, before answering Delevingne’s concern that she and her fellow researchers might be able to ‘‘read my mind through my vagina’’ with a simple shake of the head.
Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne begins streaming on ThreeNow on Friday, March 3.