[Spoiler Alert]
I did not vvibe with Euphoria.
I am currently on episode 3 of the show and although this last episode was the least disturbing of them, this show is just disturbing up to this point. My impression and I say this with the least aggressive tone is that it was written on some perverse, distorted image of 17 year old girls.
I know the main audience is older than I am because it’s the demographic that will pay for HBO Go with their own money. But I also think there are younger people watching it, at least from what I’ve seen on tik tok of makeup and outfits inspired by it. Both cases are quite problematic to me and I’ll tell you why, starting from the older audience.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show that sexualizes teenagers so much, I mean teenagers are sexual beings and they have sex, it’s alright, but being sexual is different from being sexualized.
The way this show portrays young women is just terrifying, especially when thinking about older people watching it, because it seems like an outlet for teenage fantasies but idealized by someone who wishes teenagers were like that. And it’s so violent, so fucking violent, it has bothered me so much I had weird dreams about it.
There’s a lot of violence in general in the show, but so much of it is directed towards young women, from leaked nudes and sex tapes to actual attempts of rape. And these girls just act like it’s fine, like they are strong enough, and get “good” things out of it (like going into cam girl business at 17), when in real life you get trauma out of it. I am all for strong women in media, but there’s a difference between being strong and suffering in silence, and these girls suffer in silence.
It worries me that to older audiences it will not only be perceived as normal but brushed off because the girls look more or less like teenagers if you don’t know teenagers in real life, but when you know teenagers in real life, you also know they are clueless and so, so scared even when they appear to be fearless and invincible. They are still kids, but they try to act like adults.
And yes, teens are interested in a lot of stuff, they are discovering the world, but the way the narrator says “If you are not Amish, nudes are the currency of love” excuse me? Why are you telling this to an older audience about teens? Encourage people to ask nudes from minors because apparently, it’s what they do nowadays? And the girl who has her sex tape leaked going into camgirl business at 17? It just sounds really fucked up to me. This show has this kind of voyeuristic tone that just makes it creepy, I don’t like to think about adults thinking about teens like that, it’s scary, it’s uncomfortable like creepy men staring at you in the subway.
Now about my problem with young people watching it, it’s the drugs and the impulsive decisions, up until now they did show the heavy consequences of drug abuse, but they have also shown beautiful imagery of drug use and it bothers me because Rue doesn't even know what she’s using when she gets high with Jules, it bothers me because of phrases like: “I had no intention of staying clean”, “This is the feeling I’ve been looking for my entire life”, “I know we aren’t allowed to say it but drugs are kind of cool”, when Rue just got out of rehab because she almost had an overdose.
This layered on the impulsive decisions that make them look so cool, like pretending to have sex in the pool, making money on porn hub, meeting a much, much older guy who you don’t even know in a motel room to fuck, like this kind of stuff has consequences sometimes and having to live with them is not as effortless as they make it look like it is, and to a younger audience I feel like, the visuals are so beautiful and the girls are so pretty, they might see themselves in those characters, but I don’t want them to, because these are not good examples of normal teenagers and this is not the life teenagers should have.
Maybe it’s an internship you want when you get to college, maybe it’s PTSD, maybe it’s taking years to be able to recognize love after being told by the entire world that abuse was love, but there are more consequences to your actions when you are a teen just because when shit blows over your young brain doesn’t have the maturity to deal with it and makes an even bigger mess.
I remember it vividly, I remember the nights spent crying and the fights and the discussions about things like alcohol, drugs, and sex, and I remember it being a moment of decision making. Who do you want to be? Do you want to be the sweet girl who has her nudes leaked? Do you want to be a funny girl who no one ever takes seriously? And we make the decisions we think can handle the consequences, but it’s so easy to make a decision that will impact the next few years of your life badly.
I know that because I’ve made that mess and friends made it too, different messes with similar results.
As a 22-year-old, I can now say that, like Jules, I like older guys for sure I’ve been on dates with guys whose ages went from 2 to 14 years older than me, so yeah, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the 6 months in bed crying about one of them and the moving to another country for 6 months because of another.
I have also dated guys my age and a little bit younger, and on an extended note, know more or less how to deal with them, but it took a lot more trauma than it should have taken to get here and although I am proud of who the person I’ve become, it hurts sometimes that I have to deal with anxiety, fear of abandonment, fear of not being enough, that come as baggage from other relationships. It hurts to be incredulous when the guy I love tells me that he loves me because I know it’s from years of feeling like I was not enough, hard to love, or just unworthy of it, and not from his lack of love but from the way I’ve been treated by other guys in the past who took advantage of my lack of experience and immaturity.
The choices I made as a teenager had consequences and thank God these are not even the worst ones I could have gotten, but they are bad all the same. So it is my dream to see girls making better choices than the ones I made so they can have less shit to go through in therapy as an adult and it is my dream to see girls who can look up to well written, strong female characters.
I’m gonna finish the season, but these are my thoughts about it up until now, stay tuned for a full review.
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