Mindy Kaling’s ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ is a funny, witty coming-of-age series that follows four 18-year-old college girls discovering their sexuality while adjusting to life at the fictional Essex College in Vermont.
The series, available in Africa only on Showmax, manages to match serious conversations around LGBTQ+ issues, peer pressure and sex versus power and control with humour. Despite being hilarious and just a little risque, the show does every theme justice. However, if you are also like me and went to schools in Nigeria, especially higher institutions, you’ll find yourself relating with each of the ladies or finding that you know someone who can relate. So that you’ll understand what I mean, I’ll break down the series by explaining the complexities of each of the girls.
Let’s start with Leighton, played by Renee Rapp. She has the most complex story in the series, and sadly, many members of the Nigerian LGBTQ+ community will understand her struggles. She plays an affluent legacy student from New York City who is also a closeted lesbian. Even though many Nigerians would prefer to ignore or deny this, there are many queer, gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people around, especially in universities. However, the nation’s laws inadvertently make every single one of them sit and live in closets.
The Human Rights Watch succinctly explains it. “On January 7, 2014, Goodluck Jonathan signed the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill (SSMPA) into law. The notional purpose of the SSMPA is to prohibit marriage between persons of the same sex. The law forbids any cohabitation between same-sex sexual partners and bans any ‘public show of same-sex amorous relationship.’ The SSMPA imposes a 10-year prison sentence on anyone who ‘registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organization or supports’ the activities of such organizations. Punishments are severe, ranging from 10 to 14 years in prison”.
But Leighton’s story is just one of many Nigerian girls’ face. Perhaps also more prominent is Whitney’s story. Played by Alyah Chanelle Scott, Whitney is a star soccer player from Seattle who is having an affair with her assistant soccer coach and is the daughter of a U.S. senator. We’ll focus on the part where she’s having an illicit affair with a man who has power over her career, despite not having been coerced into it. The series follows the 18-year-old trying to navigate this dynamic with a man far older and better suited to know that what they are both doing is wrong. Even worse, the coach lied about his marital status and kept lying to her throughout their relationship.
Many young women in Nigerian universities will relate strongly to this story. Perhaps, many of them have an even more violent version of this story. With several ‘sex for grades’ stories coming out of National and state universities, this conclusion is not far-fetched. Nigerian lecturers with the capacity to make or break young women’s careers have notoriously continued to hunt them to soothe their sexual needs. Despite the ground-breaking work of Kiki Mordi with the BBC, this nasty behaviour has not stopped.
Let’s move on to those with less dramatic stories, like Bela, an Indian-American student from Nutley, New Jersey, who wants to become a comedy writer and is sex-positive. Amrit Kaur plays the role of Bela. She uses the word ‘sex positive’ as an excuse to have sex with someone she has zero emotional connections with only because she likes his abs. In truth, she is just an American version of an ‘omo get inside’ who finally has so much freedom thanks to college and makes sure to enjoy every minute. Many girls in Nigerian universities will definitely relate to her behaviour even if they are not having sex.
Finally, there is Pauline Chalamet, who plays the role of Kimberly, a new work-study student from Gilbert, Arizona, a small, predominantly white town. I’ll break this down better so you can see the similarities. Kimberly is perhaps a poor student from a different region from where she schools, so she comes across as a little weird. Even worse, she has to work as she goes to school to afford her fees and other basic needs. As for her sexual life, after being shackled with a guy that manages to be a nerd and a jerk simultaneously, finding a sexy partner in Nico (Leighton’s brother) means she may lose her way and let her grades suffer.
Again, her story will fit perfectly in a university where a good girl meets either a bad boy or a popular boy and loses herself in his life. Yet, her story and the other ladies in this brilliant series are just some of the many versions of Nigerian ladies in schools trying to understand their sex lives. And as we try to become less of a repressive society, this series proves that it’s time to allow young women to discover who they are sexually without the fear of facing shame if they try.
If this breakdown piqued your interest in the series and you have yet to see it, head to www.showmax.com to watch it. You can access the platform for as low as N1,200, and this show is among the thousands of others you enjoy on the African streaming platform. But I’ll be back with more reviews, so keep your fingers crossed!
