You don’t expect to feel moved by a programme called Planet Sex, but there are moments in the new BBC docuseries (fronted by supermodel Cara Delevingne) which genuinely brought a tear to my eye. Each of the six episodes — the series is a combined effort with US streaming giant Hulu — deals with a different facet of sex and sexuality in the modern age: from queer identities to porn to the roles of love and monogamy. And as the series progresses we are treated to Delevingne on more likeable and vulnerable form than in any cinematic turn I’ve ever seen from her.
Much has already been written about the first episode — which looks at female pleasure and the orgasm gap. In the opening scenes Delevingne attends a masturbation workshop (“it’s the bravest thing I’ve ever done,” she tells us — and as she lays in a circle with a group of other women, about to attempt a masturbation technique called ‘revving the engine’, you absolutely believe her).
She also has her orgasm studied in a lab by German scientists and makes a model plaster cast of her own vagina. We learn that clitorises have the same amount of erectile tissue as penises (“forget big dicks, big clits is where it’s at!”) and that Delevingne feels a lot of shame around her vagina. In many ways, though, I found the first episode to be the least compelling (and some of the puns in the voiceover gave me the ick).
The question I kept coming back to was ‘why Delevingne?’ Beyond the fact that she is very famous, I wasn’t entirely sure why she was the person guiding me through this sexual odyssey. We are living through a boom time in sex ed content, with literally millions of TikTok and Instagram accounts dedicated to exploring the full spectrum of sexual experiences and indentities. Obviously not all of this is good content but creators like Ruby Rare and Almaz Ohene have made careers out of clever and insightful takes on many of the same themes which are explored in Planet Sex (Rare, for instance, launched a podcast series last year with episodes dedicated to pleasure, porn, gender non-conformity and non-monogamy). Why not one of them? There is obviously something fascinating about learning that one of the world’s most famous women likes to watch porn, but what was Delevingne herself adding to the conversation?
That question, though, is amply answered in the second instalment. "When you’re in this job, and you’re kinda famous, it kind of stunts things… I came out but never went to Pride… I didn’t really develop my queerness. I feel like I’m just coming to it all very late,” Delevingne explains to us in this episode, which is called Out and Proud.
In an attempt to understand her own queer identity, she visits the world’s biggest lesbian pool party, hosted annually in Palm Springs, California. There is something incredibly moving about seeing her come to terms with her sexuality — and there are points where she seems genuinely nervous. By the end of the episode you can’t help but feel like you’ve witnessed something very special and important.
Plus what it ever so slightly lacks in thematic novelty, Planet Sex makes up for in ambition. Delevingne travels the world in search of answers — she visits (among other places) a women-only sex party in LA, the home of a queer buddist monk in Tokyo, and scientific labs in Berlin. Along the way issues are examined through varying lenses — from personal experience and pop culture to science and psychology.
In the episode on porn, for instance, Delevingne visits a lab where the brains of porn-addicted individuals (some of whom are watching upwards of 15 hours of porn a day), are studied via MRI. It’s a fascinating segment — we’ve always known that porn was having a neurological impact, in this episode Delevingne shows us what that impact is.
All in all, this the kind of sex education I wish I had had as a teen. Open, forthright, scientifically sound and entertaining. And as an adult, there’s plenty to keep me interested — particularly Delevingne herself, whose openness in this journey of self-discovery is commendable and compelling to watch.
