Media Review #1: Kelsey

Euphoria season 1 episode 7 Review By Kelsey L:

Words: 587

            Euphoria is a television show that shows the hard reality many teenagers grow up in today. The show covers topics such as drug use, sex, gender dysphoria, abusive relationships, and much more. The episode I find particularly fascinating is episode 7 in season 1. This episode focuses on a character named Cassie who has a bad reputation for her promiscuity. In her backstory, she is shown as a young teen who has just hit puberty and men she has known her whole life are already starting sexualizing her because of her good looks and physique. Cassie grew up with a mother who was obsessed with her looks and a father who abandoned her in her early teen years. This led to a range of issues that drove her to promiscuity in order to please the men in her life. Cassie is in my opinion one of the most misunderstood characters in the show. People would be quick to watch this and label her a slut, when in reality she isn’t sure how to have a real connection with someone that isn’t based around sex. 

            In episode one when we are introduced to Cassie, she is the love interest of another character named Mcay. Mcay is telling his friends how much he likes her. His friends then proceed to tell him how she is a slut and show him her sex tape. During this exchange his friend says “You want my advice? You fuck her like the whore she is and kick her to the curb.” This made Mcay question his feelings for Cassie because of the fact that she had nude photos and videos that were leaked on the internet. Later that night Mcay and Cassie are hooking up and he starts being very aggressive and forceful towards her. Seeing Cassie on the internet made Mcay think that she was a stereotypical “whore” so he treated her as such in the bedroom, which she did not like. Cassie was head over heels for Mcay and wanted to be intimate to express her feelings but when he showed her aggression and not love she was taken aback and disturbed. Once Mcay apologized for acting like that she forgives his and continues to have sex with him because she feels guilty that she stopped before she even started. 

            In episode 7 which tells Cassie’s side of the story, we see how the naked photos and videos came to be. The narrator says, “She didn’t like to be alone and every guy she dated asked for the same things. She almost always said yes even though it didn’t always make her feel good.” While the narrator is saying that, video recordings of Cassie’s old boyfriends are played with them asking her to preform sexual acts after she repeatedly says no. Cassie ends up making sex tapes with her ex boyfriends because she is pressured into it, knowing they will likely share those videos after they breakup. Cassie continuously seeks out men because she needs to feel validated and wanted, but she uses her body to attract them and that doesn’t always result in the best quality of men. She performs these sexual acts and does whatever they ask regardless of her own feelings because she is eager to please the men in her life, so they don’t leave her. Cassie is using sex as a defense mechanism in fear of being abandoned but ends up getting labeled as a slut because pictures and videos of their intimate moments are leaked.