Sex, Media and Open Conversation

Sexual imagery is everywhere in commercial culture, used to sell clothing, watches and hats, yet the images themselves are rarely discussed. That mismatch is the starting point for a Canadian broadcaster and photographer who hosts a talk program about sex and culture. Her work blends performance, teaching and storytelling, and she has said she prefers to be seen as many things at once.

The ideas she described in an interview touch on advertising, consent, photography and sex education.

The premise of the program

The host said the program exists because sex is used heavily to market products while society behaves as if it were absent, so the messages about sex and love carried by pervasive imagery go unexamined. In her view, conversation helps establish three points: being different is normal, what happens in a private bedroom is not a matter for outside opinion, and anything consensual among adults with the capacity to consent is acceptable. These are her positions, reported as she stated them, and others take different views.

Suggestion over explicitness

On air she aims to speak about sex expressively but not explicitly, with the goal of making the topic comfortable for listeners across a wide range of ages. She applies a similar taste to photography, favouring allusion and suggestion over blunt depictions, and she has described mystery as a large part of what makes imagery appealing. Her photographic work includes boudoir and creative portraits, and she said she enjoys watching sitters move from self-conscious to confident in front of the camera.

Sex education and intimacy

She has expressed interest in education through workshops, classroom visits and call-in segments. Her criticism of school programs is that they cover the mechanics of sex while giving little attention to intimacy, the reason many people seek sex and the topic she says they most want to understand. Sex education curricula do differ in how much they include relationships and emotions alongside anatomy, and provinces set their own content.

Self-censorship

The host also described the pressure of an imagined audience of critics that encourages performers and writers to tone themselves down. She said she decided to stop shaping herself into a family-friendly version for that imagined audience. Other creative projects she mentioned at the time reflect the period of the interview and may have changed.

Taken together, her comments place her within a long-running discussion about how commercial media use sexual imagery, who benefits from it and how openly the subject can be discussed in public.