a y2k guide to sex
i was literally like 12
According to the internet, you’re a millennial if you were born in the years 1981–1996. For a big chunk of us, that means your adolescence was wrapped up in the introduction of chat rooms—and the birth of the whole ass internet—TRL and 106 & Park, and Friday trips to Blockbuster Video. And if you’re me, it also means you probably can’t spell millennial on the first try.
It meant growing up with the things made popular again in this, 2026, the year of our analogue lorde lord.
Generation X was before us, and after us came Gen Z. No matter the generation, one thing is synonymous with the youth of every era—sex was all in pop culture, and teens were the target.
The 80s gave us Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky’s, and Screwballs; the 90s gave us Kids, American Pie, Cruel Intentions, The Wood, and Trojan War; then the 2000s came and gave us Superbad, The Girl Next Door, and about a million American Pie spin-offs.
All had a few things in common: they were all (mostly) hella white and suburban, they told boys that it was okay to be sexual and painted girls as sluts or frigid, and they all featured teens trying to lose their virginity, get someone else’s virginity, or at the very least make out with someone before college starts.
And I was watching it all.
I was also reading it all and listening to it all, and there was no one around to tell me not to. I joke that if it weren’t for my parents’ complete lack of supervision, I probably wouldn’t be the pop culture-forward writer that I am today. Well, that and the myriad of INSANE experiences I had—but mostly the whole lack of supervision.
I could watch and read and listen to pretty much whatever I wanted. I was alone a lot as a child. I had a TV with cable in my room, a VHS player, and a radio. Then, right next door, something in the home of many Black millennial kids—the Computer Room.
The internet raised me, and that’s really, actually not good lol. Because it meant I was figuring out everything on my own, or from other latchkey kids who had that AOL CD-ROM they got from school (or Farmer Jacks) that gave them access to the World Wide Web.
We were just telling each other a loop of incorrect information. Posting away messages with song lyrics full of innuendo, making LiveJournals and Xangas full of pixelated photos of movies we shouldn’t have been seeing. It was just the start of misinformation and hormones spreading like wildfire.
I started thinking about this because I’ve been reading Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert. Not only is it incredible because, throughout the book, she chats about/quotes Black pop culture and many of its writers and critics (hello dream hampton, WHO I MET AND LIKED ME!), but because it’s a whole journey through girlhood and pop culture on a level that I kinda never thought of.
Black girls are often sexualized from a very young age. We’re told we’re “fast” by the women around us, but the grown men around us are so rarely clocked as the, well, disgusting pedophiles that they (likely) are.
I agree that being a teen and being pretty horny go hand in hand, and that pop culture will always find a way to show you to yourself, and that’s all well and good. BUT You eventually grow up, look back, and realize, “oh…that’s incorrect as fuck,” and move forward.
I feel like that’s something that teen girls do…but teen boys of the era, I fear, often turn into the men who purchase microphones or hide behind poorly named Twitter accounts.
Teen pop culture has since evolved. I think the shift started to happen in about 2010. Teen dramas that teetered on the line of wild while rarely crossing over into hypersexed or “uh-oh” territory. Pretty Little Liars, DOPE, The Vampire Diaries, Easy A, grown-ish, and even Project X show that shift.
It’s still very playful and sex forward but with some depth and awareness to it that did not exist in the pop culture I had as a teen. I love that, I think it’s great that things like Blockers, Booksmart, Bel-Air, Sex Education, and other shows/films I don’t know exist because I am outside of the age bracket, exist now.
So, in honor of this book and my teen years (I was in high school 2000–2004), I’ve decided to compile a list of all the sex-forward pop culture I can remember that had a hold on me in some way. Heads up—a big scoop of it features teen girls, and absolutely should not have!
Cosmopolitan Magazine should be on this list for sure, I cut out all the sex tips and kept them in an Adidas box in my room. For what—I don’t know…anyway, let the trip down memory lane begin!
My Letterboxd is your new favorite place, but here are some CURRENT shows about sex that I love.
Mrs. Fletcher
I have talked about this on Threads but it’s NOT streaming anywhere! Well…anywhere like legal. It is only one Dailymotion because some beautiful soul uploaded very odd versions of it. Grateful nonetheless.
Dying For Sex
We DO NOT talk about this limited series enough. We is me. I do not talk about this limited series enough.
Insecure
hey, remember when Twitter was divided about the whole blowjob and cumming scene? CRAZZZZYYYY!!
And here are some teen films from my era that I LOOOOVVVE
Roll Bounce
Swimfan
Jawbreaker
O
Loser
The Wood
Sugar & Spice
Movies
Fear (1996)
This movie needs to be thrown away and locked up, then covered in cement. Mark Whalberg becomes obsessed with a 16-year-old girl (Played by a 19-year-old Reese Witherspoon), and it’s so bad. But I watched it and couldn’t get it out of my mind. There is so much wrong with this film, and so many parts of it were so fucked up, but the whole first half of the trailer markets it as if he’s just a misunderstood bad boy that she happens to fall in love with. SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE SNATCHED THE REMOTE OUT OF MY HANDS.
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Step-siblings who wanted to fuck and played weird little fuck games with their “friends” because they were rich and bored. AND I ATE IT THE FUCK UP. It was weirrrrrrrdddd, but something felt more…okay about it because at least everyone involved was a teenager? IDK, it gave us an iconic kissing scene and Bittersweet Symphony, so maybe I’m 10% glad no one took my remote.
Poison Ivy (1992)
No…..No…..No….I hate to say it, but I was obsessed with this movie for far longer than I should have been. Drew Barrymore was 17 years old when she was playing Ivy, a girl who was seducing (she was a kid so…she def wasn’t seducing anyone) her best friend’s dad, played by Tom Skerritt, who was 58. It’s an erotic thriller, a genre that no teen should ever be involved in. What’s worse is that in 1993, The Crush came out, where Alicia Silverstone plays a 14-year-old who is obsessed with a photographer who is millions of years older than her. HELLLLPPPPPP.
The Players Club (1998)
When I think of blonde hair on Black women, I think of Ronnie, and when I think of Ronnie, I think about watching her yell at a bunch of white cops at a party to tip her more money. I don’t remember how I saw it, but I vaguely remember cousins being around, but no adults. Anyway, Ronnie (Chrystale Wilson) is still around and still a babe.
American Pie (1999)
I mainly cared about Natasha Lyonne’s character in this movie, but yeah, the fact that it took place in Michigan was always really cool to me. Also wild that he put his dick in a hot pie, that he recorded a girl without permission, and that one of his friends was fucking his other friend’s mom. WHY WAS I WATCHING THISSSSSSS?
Music
Ludacris—What’s Your Fantasy (1999)
Babes…..I have a vivid memory of singing this song in the back of my best friend’s van on the way to pick up her aunt for Saturday errands. Top of our lungs, fully unaware of what these fantasies were all about, but knowing that I wanted in. It’s….wild.
t.a.t.u—All The Things She Said (2002)
THE LORE OF THIS SONG. HELP HELP HELLLLPPPP. Some people were an All The Things She Said queer and some were The Kiss poster kinda queer, and everyone was a “Queen Latifah makes me feel a way” kinda queer.
While we all now know that this was A SCHEME SET UP BY TODD (I love to say this even though I JUST learned what it means), it was still a part of my history of learning about sex.
The Donnas—Spend the Night (Full album, 2002)
The Spend the Night album is one of my favorites and was also one of the first times, I feel, that I felt it was okay to have hormones as a teenage girl. The album is great, but a lot of it talks about ALL the same stuff that the boys were singing about, except this time IT WAS GIRLS.
It didn’t feel corny that they were flipping things; it felt actually cool. Also, Google the drummer Torry Castellano for a surpriseeeeeee!
Aerosmith—Crazy (Music video, 1994)
HORRIFYING. Was this video part of a bit of a queer awakening for me in some way when I saw it on pop-up video years later…YES. Was this also layered for me ‘cos a bit of my queerness was also wrapped up in the movie Empire Records that starred Liv Tyler…also YES.
But the bigger question is…
WHY WAS STEVEN TYLER MAKING A VIDEO THAT STARRED HIS 16-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AND A 16-YEAR-OLD ALCIA SILVERSTONE, WHERE THEY ARE SCHOOLGIRLS WHO GO ON THE RUN, WIN A STRIPPING CONTEST AT A STRIP CLUB, AND ALSO HAVE A HEAVILY IMPLIED ROMANTIC CONNECTION?
QTNA!
Q.B.’s Finest—Oochie Wally (Music video, 2000)
Egregious. Every lyric, every word….BUT THERE I WAS SINGING ALONG, WAITING TO ACT IT OUT IN THE FUTTTTUURREEEE.
Books
The Sex Chronicles and Addicted by Zane (1998-1999)
WHY AND HOW DID I GET AHOLD OF THESE BOOKS IN LITERALLY MIDDLE SCHOOL? I remember reading these and not fully understanding everything, but knowing that I probably shouldn’t be. It was an interesting time because, like, everyone else was reading these books too. Lock up whoever the ADULT librarian was who let me check this out.
The Coldest Winter Ever by Sistah Souljah (1999)
This I read in high school, and I THINK it was on a syllabus. Every girl in school had that thick, soft-covered book in her backpack or in her locker. Winter Santiaga was the girl everyone wanted to be, but looking back WOOOOWWWW WOW WOW WOW. She was 17 years old in relationships with men older than her, and why was I so invested in that? HELP. LOCK UP THE TEACHER WHO (MAY HAVE) PUT THIS ON THE SYLLABUS.
Belle de Jour by Joseph Kessel (1928)
I got this book from the same teacher who let me read her copy of Bridget Jones Diary, in high school….and I ate it the fuck up. It’s about a housewife who becomes a sex worker (without her husband knowing) to fulfill herself sexually.
It should be noted that this particular book spawned a whole thing for me. I later read the memoir The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl (2005) by an author who went by the name Belle de Jour (who would later be revealed), AND watched Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper, which came out in 2007.
This one was a whole new level for me because, although the original book was fiction, the other was real. It was something about this being someone’s real-life stories that fascinated me. So when it became a series later, it was so cool to see it all come to life.
TV
Degrassi—”U Got the Look” a.k.a Manny’s thong episode (2003)
When I was in middle and high school, I was wearing regular cotton drawls, probably from Old Navy or those packs of Fruit of the Loom you could get from like CVS or Rite Aid. Then came the thong. I didn’t have
This episode was iconic ‘cos like…MANNY PUT YOUR THONG AWAY!
Undressed (1999)
Now this show? THIS SHOW? Added it to the list of why I wanted to go AWAY to college and have a dorm. Having sex in a twin bed where you’d chat about it afterwards with your roommate? GIMMIE IT NOW. Turns out, having sex in an XL twin bed is not at all as glamorous as they make it on the TV, but the roommate chat is quite the bees knees.
Also, everyone was on this show back in the day, I’m serious, go look it up.
Taxicab Confessions (1995)
The second story in this episode is wild, the girl talking about her love of women.
“I love women….i want to be having sex with you, i want to be making love to you day and night, night and day. I don’t want to like, shop with you, that’s like, fucked up.”
It’s WILD. I was watching this show, the feelings of being queer had already set in by this point, and I was watching other people talk about being queer, usually in New York City. There were people OPENLY talking about being gay and kinda giving no fucks about it.
Shows like this are the reason why I was so dead set on moving to New York.
I wanted to be in a place where I could not just talk about it but be about it, and I did. When I look back to how much this show in particular probably influenced me, not sexually but in more terms of my sexuality, it’s like a wild, glaring alarm bell that I was searching for people and a place where I could be myself.
Unknowingly looking for queer community inside my TV, while my volume was set to 3, and my hand was sweaty from how tight I was holding the remote just in case my mom came knocking.
Real Sex (1990)
You know those videos on IG like The Hopeless Romantic Society where they interview folks on the street about their sex lives and relationships?
That’s exactly what Real Sex was, except that in between the interviews, there would be full stories of people and their kinks. I learned WAY TOO MUCH. It was kinda crazy, I think it also taught me early not to yuck people’s yum? There wasn’t much on it when I was watching that I understood fully, but it was kind of like a way longer version of those videos they used to teach girls about sex and periods in school.
Except with nudity. So maybe not like them at all, but whatever you get it.
It was, I think, the first place I ever saw a dildo, strap-ons, threesomes; it was insane. You can’t watch it anywhere except YouTube, where people have uploaded grainy videos of it. I do think it could be a fun night, though, to watch and either cringe or pick your mouth up off the floor about all the stuff that is happening.
okay bye —
