When was the last time you watched a sex scene that got you really hot under the collar? Was it Belly and… (we don’t want to do spoilers, but really, surely you’ve seen it by now) in The Summer I Turned Pretty? That bath scene in House of Guinness? Or, perhaps it was a while back, Perhaps it was when Colin and Penelope finally got their hands all over each other in that sweaty carriage in Bridgerton? Or when Marianne and Connell made lockdown a whole lot hotter in Normal People? Or, perhaps you revisited a classic, Neve Campbell and Denise Richards in Wild Things (terrible film… hot sex) or The Handmaiden (set in 1930s Korea, with some illicit scissoring)?
At Cosmopolitan UK, we’re big fans of the sex scene. We know what makes them hot, and what makes them, well, not (don’t even talk to us about Carrie and Aiden’s phone sex, we’ve wiped it from our memory).
But, lately, they’ve been getting a bad rap.
A 2023 UCLA study made headlines proclaiming that Gen Z were “turned off by sex” and that this generation doesn’t want to see sex on screen (the results were more nuanced than that, respondents actually said they prefer seeing friendship to romance on screen, which is fair enough, our friendships matter to us!) but still, it got us thinking… when it comes to sex in TV and films what spicy content really gets you off? So, instead of making assumptions (hey, maybe you found that phone sex scene hot… no judgement) we decided to ask you directly.
So, please, we’d love to hear from you, in our short survey! Click here to let us know all about your spiciest sex scenes.
Catriona Innes is Cosmopolitan UK’s multiple award-winning Commissioning Editor, who has won BSME awards both for her longform investigative journalism as well as for leading the Cosmopolitan features department. Alongside commissioning and editing the features section, both online and in print, Catriona regularly writes her own hard-hitting investigations spending months researching some of the most pressing issues affecting young women today.
She has spent time undercover with specialist police forces, domestic abuse social workers and even Playboy Bunnies to create articles that take readers to the heart of the story. Catriona is also a published author, poet and volunteers with a number of organisations that directly help the homeless community of London. She’s often found challenging her weak ankles in towering heels through the streets of Soho. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.